


Failure to Communicate

by ELG



Category: Angel: the Series, Buffy the Vampire Slayer
Genre: Gen, Hurt/Comfort
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-03-20
Updated: 2013-03-20
Packaged: 2017-12-05 22:27:47
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 28,628
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/728594
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ELG/pseuds/ELG
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>When Buffy comes back from LA upset about her altercation with Angel, Riley and Xander decide to drive up to Los Angeles to confront the vampire - only to find a battered Wesley and Cordelia trying to come to terms with what Faith did to them. When a vision hits, the four of them have to work together. Takes place after AtS 1.19 <i>Sanctuary</i> and during BtVS 4.20 <i>The Yoko Factor </i> (the events of which get slightly altered in this fic). WARNINGS: Can’t think of anything too icky in it unless there are people who are traumatized by Riley or doughnuts. Oh, apart from all the fighting and chopping up of demons and stuff.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Failure to Communicate

##### Part One

Riley walked away from the dorm room with a thousand questions buzzing in his head like angry bees. Buffy had come back from LA more shaken up and upset than even he had been fearing. He didn’t know if this was the reverberation from realizing Angel was still the guy – scratch that – _vampire_ that she loved, or if the vampire had done something to upset her. Either way, she had felt like someone wounded to him; someone damaged. He had an overwhelming urge to punch a wall. Some of it was anger with himself, because he hadn’t asked the right questions, but perhaps that was because he had been afraid of hearing the answers, and nothing about the look in her eyes had helped with that fear.

He had been stupid not to realize what it was that Buffy was leaving out as she told him all about the guy she had loved – despite being a vampire – who had turned into the evil killer who had terrorised her friends because of a curse. A curse that she had triggered when they….

Riley grimaced. It hurt, and not because Buffy had slept with another guy before him – he’d known about Parker and assumed – even hoped, as the guy was such a waste of space – he wasn’t her first. She wasn’t his first either. That wasn’t what was bothering him, it was the thought of Buffy and Angel getting together being of such ground-shaking significance that it could trigger a curse which turned a good guy bad. That was something, however disturbing, that was proof of a connection. Maybe love shouldn’t be going insane and trying to kill a girl’s nearest and dearest, but, damn, no one could say it wasn’t a tangible measurement of…something. He wasn’t sure how he could compete with that. It wasn’t even as if he could become a serial killer and win the really really caring _that_ much prize because the other guy had got there first. Even if he started dismembering people to prove how much she meant to him, it would still be passé.

He winced at the high level of stupidity currently swilling around inside his brain. Angel having a curse shouldn’t trigger this amount of crazy in _him_ , should it? Finding that phonebooth and calling Xander was also probably stupid, but he did it anyway, hoping that the delay in Xander answering wasn’t because he was having sex with that strange Anya girl. He really didn’t want to be thinking about anyone else’s sex-life, right now, in fact, he wasn’t sure he even wanted to be thinking about his own.

“Hey…?”

It was relief to hear Xander’s voice. “I saw Buffy,” Riley said.

“That’s good.” A pause. “That’s not good?”

“She seems pretty upset.”

“Well, Angel will do that to a girl. Every time, and I mean every _single_ time. Just one of the many reasons why I so often want to stab him with a piece of pointy wood.”

“I didn’t ask the right questions. I don’t think I helped. Also – I feel like a clown in these pants.”

“I’ll bring your clothes over.” Xander added tentatively: “Do you want me to come via Buffy’s dorm room – see how she’s doing?”

“Would you?” 

“Sure. I’ll be right over.”

It was probably just as well that Xander was on the other end of the phone at the moment instead of in the room, or Riley would have been forced to hug him. He stepped out of the phone booth and made his way back to the ruined wreckage of Sunnydale High School, the place where Buffy had lived out a whole life before she knew him, that included being a Slayer, and sleeping with a vampire, and having her heart broken into so many pieces that Riley wasn’t sure that he was going to be enough to fix it.

***

Sitting in the wreckage of the High School with pieces of crispy fried Mayor spattered around him, Riley kept turning it over in his head. Xander had come over and brought him clothing and an update, after what sounded like a fairly unsatisfactory meeting with Buffy and more questions to puzzle over. It seemed that she had helped Faith, despite everything the girl had done to her; risked her neck for a fellow Slayer who had done her every kind of harm; the link between them as Slayers still unbroken despite betrayal and attempted murder and a body swap. He had thought that should provide closure of a kind. Buffy had gone to LA to save Angel from Faith, and had ended up saving Faith from the Watchers’ Council. Any guilt she must have felt about being willing to sacrifice Faith for Angel the previous year must surely have been dealt with? But Buffy hadn’t acted like someone who had achieved closure, more like someone who had been wounded so deeply it might not heal for a very long time.

He was blaming Angel for that. 

There was also the fact that, little as Xander had got out of her about what had taken place, it had still been ten times more information than she had offered to Riley.

“You okay?”

He wasn’t sure why Xander had stuck around, other than that Riley clearly sucked at saying ‘Yeah, I’m fine’ with any conviction when asked how he was. He liked Xander, he really did, but when a guy who couldn’t hold down a job as a pizza delivery guy started feeling sorry for you, there was a hint right there that your life was pretty much turning to crap.

Right now, for the first time in his life, he wished that he smoked. He wanted an excuse to go outside and look up at the sky, try and get some perspective from the vastness of space or something, not to mention – something to do with his hands that wasn’t punching a wall. If a vampire had attacked him right then he would have been grateful.

“Jerk.” He looked up in surprise to find Xander, nose wrinkled in disgust, looking right at him. Riley was about to agree with the boy that yes, right now, he pretty much was behaving like a major jerk but wasn’t quite sure how to stop. When Xander added: “Two hundred and fifty years walking the earth and the guy _still_ doesn’t know how not to be an asshole?”

Riley had always liked Xander, he realized. But it had been a neutral sort of emotion before, like the way he liked cereal, not the way he liked starlight. Abruply, it peaked to a new level of warmth. He began to like Xander the way one liked, not the friend of a girlfriend who had always been good to her, but the way one liked an ally. Instead of offering to buy Xander a drink and, possibly, later in the evening when the beer had kicked him, fold him in a sentimental embrace and pat him warmly on the back, he said carefully: “So, you think this Angel guy upset her, too?”

“The last time I saw that look in someone’s eyes was when Willow found Cordy and me kissing in a closet.”

Riley had to consider that for a moment. “Can you still be in the closet if it’s girls you’re into kissing?”

Xander gave him a look of surprise. “Did you buy that sense of humour on ebay?”

“It’s standard issue. Comes with the guns.” He knew he was on quicksand here. He thought Xander liked him more than he liked Angel, but then Xander seemed to like a root canal more than he liked Angel; that didn’t change the fact that the boy’s first loyalty was to Buffy. There was also the fact that Riley sucked at subterfuge. Being straightforward tended to be where he excelled and he decided to go for it now: “Do you think it would help Buffy if we found out what happened?”

“Not if she’s the one who has to tell us,” Xander answered decisively, and Riley had that sneaking feeling he was getting too often of late, that these friends of hers were always going to know her better than he did. Still, in this instance, he was getting confirmation that he was reading her right.

“How about calling up this Cordelia and asking her what happened?”

“Buffy said Cordy wasn’t there. I just asked her.” 

The answer was disappointing, but Riley liked the fact they had both had the same idea.

Xander shook his head. “And not for anyone am I calling up Wesley Whining-Waste-of-Space to ask how things went down in LA. And, anyway, I doubt he’d know. The only one who really knows, right now, except for Buffy herself, is…”

“Angel.” In the past, angels had been something that glittered on top of Christmas trees; something that watched over shepherds in Christmas carols; something white-winged and good and crowned with a gold paper halo. Now, it was something dark and dangerous and painful. When he said the word now, it tasted a little sour on his tongue, where once it would have been light and sweet as whipped cream.

“But he wouldn’t answer me.” Xander shrugged, a little bitterly, and Riley thought about how galling it was for him, an adult and a soldier, to have a rival who was undead and immortal and had superhuman strength, and then magnified it by ten for how that felt when you were a teenager whom even the people who loved you didn’t always take seriously. It made him want to take Xander seriously like he never had before.

“He might answer both of us.” He risked a smile, although he wasn’t feeling exactly light-hearted. “Especially if we take lethal weapons.”

Xander shoved his hands into his coat pockets and squared his shoulders. He looked relieved at having an ally at last and the smile that lit across his face was in no way boyish. “Agent Finn, I like the way you think….”

 

So, here they were, driving up the freeway to LA, hoping to be at the offices of Angel Investigations by the afternoon. Angel would be trapped in his office then; he couldn’t just walk out on them mid-sentence into the death-dealing daylight, and perhaps he would even feel bad enough about whatever it was that he’d said or done to give them an explanation. Perhaps they could carry an apology from her ex-lover back to Buffy. Riley tried to picture what a vampire apology looked like, and imagined himself gingerly carrying a mauve-black rose that smelt so sweet it filled the car with perfume, but burned up into glowing ash when sunlight touched its petals.

He had an itch on his skin from where Faith had touched him. Sixteen showers later and it still wasn’t enough to shake off the feeling of her fingers. He was afraid Buffy might still blame him for not realizing it hadn’t been her; only in the back of her mind, perhaps, but still enough to set up a fissure of doubt. Anyone from the Initiative – were he still on speaking terms with anyone in the Initiative – would have told him that was crazy. They lived in a world where it turned out there really were demons and monsters and things that went bump in the night, but the humans were still human, and people were the things that you could trust. They didn’t shape-shift or soul-switch. They were who they were, all the time. Except these teenagers knew better than he did. The world, to them, was more elastic, and nothing could be taken for granted, not even the touch of the woman you loved, not her caress or her kiss, or a word that came out of the mouth that was undoubtedly hers. 

He was the one who’d been raped by a stranger, yet he suspected Buffy was the one feeling betrayed. Willow’s friend had known. That still upset him, that someone who had never met Buffy before still knew her better than him. He had to remind himself that Willow’s friend also lived in a world where nothing could be taken for granted, whereas he had only just strayed across that threshold. All bets were off on a Hellmouth, that was the truth of it. Nothing, including the laws of physics, could be relied upon here. Not people either. Maybe not even himself if he stayed here too long. But all the time he still found himself thinking – Would _he_ have known it was Faith? Perhaps, more to the point, was the thought that Buffy believed that Angel would have known the difference, whereas she had the empirical proof that Riley Finn had not.

Xander woke with a grunt, wiping his mouth as if he thought he’d been drooling, even though he hadn’t. “Do you want me to drive?”

“No, it’s okay.”

It wasn’t okay. It was days since he’d had a good night’s sleep, and although it was a bright winter day, the edge of the road kept dissolving into darkness. He wondered if that was really the road he was looking at, or his future. If that was what became of everyone who lived on a Hellmouth. If being in Sunnydale automatically equalled being swallowed by the night.

He switched on the radio to keep himself awake and found that Dar Williams was singing about Iowa:

_…But way back where I come from, we never mean to bother,_  
_We don’t like to make our passions other people’s concern,_  
_And we walk in the world of safe people, and at night we walk into our houses and burn._

_Iowa oh oh, Iowa oh oh I-Iowa_

_How I long to fall just a little bit, to dance out of the lines and stray from the light,  
But I fear that to fall in love with you, is to fall from a great and gruesome height…._

Riley switched off the radio so fast he bruised his fingertips. He had used to like that song. Now he needed some empirical assurance that Love didn’t have to be painful. He believed that as he believed in right and wrong. A man could make the world a better place, and he could make the woman that he loved happy. In the end, that was all a man really needed to hold onto, to keep things simple enough that life became a game in which there was some chance of winning. He loved Buffy; that was straightforward enough. He believed that she could love him, given time enough to heal from all the wounds that life and past love had inflicted on her. He believed the world would be a better place with less demons in it. And even the Hellmouth could only swallow a man if he let it. He was here, negotiating the unfamiliar street signs of an unfamiliar city, because he wanted to help the woman he loved, and because she deserved to be happy. Looked at that way, things became a whole lot simpler. 

He glanced across at Xander, who looked rumpled and exhausted and in need of a shave, but who was here, with him, on his side, because he thought he was good for Buffy, and, not just good for her, but better for her than Angel had been. That made him feel better about himself and helped thaw out some of the chill left over from that bleak look in Buffy’s eyes. “Let’s get some lunch and then pay a call on a certain supernatural detective agency.”

Xander nodded. “Lunch sounds good. Many, many donuts and an industrial sized vat of caffeine with an intravenous delivery system would also work for me.”

Nodding, Riley headed towards the part of town where vampires apparently helped the helpless – when they weren’t lending succour to the enemies of their ex-lover and re-breaking the soldered-together fragments of her heart.

***

Whatever he’d been expecting, it hadn’t been this. The office a vampire worked out of ought to have absorbed something…demonic from its owner, but this place was disappointingly everyday. They walked up the stairs of the office building with Xander still licking donut sugar from his fingers, and Riley waited for the organ music to start up, a bat to wing its way past, something to creak or groan, but, except for the fluorescent light in the stairwell fizzing a little, there was nothing here to suggest even the slightly eerie. 

The lettering on the door wasn’t even in a gothic font and Riley felt a surge of irritation about a vampire setting up a business where anyone could walk through the door and not know that he or she was dealing with a demon. Was there any proof that after clients walked into this office they ever walked _out_ again? 

The door was ajar, making it easy to look inside. He tensed up as he waited for his first sight of the guy who had sent Buffy back to Sunnydale with that look on her face. 

“Why are we here again?” a woman asked.

They both started a little and Riley glanced at Xander, easing the door open a little further so they could both look into the room. A slender, dark-haired woman was sitting on a desk, waving a folder around for emphasis, but there was something lack lustre in the way she did it, perhaps because of the angry-looking bruise on her left cheekbone.

“We’re just…holding the fort in case any clients drop by. We still need the money, after all.” 

The other person Riley could see was a quietly-spoken, English-accented man in his late-twenties, his face sharpened with thinness and blurred with bruises. He was pale enough to qualify as a vampire, but there was nothing at all glamorous about him, none of that razzle-dazzle that he knew Angel possessed. And besides, sunlight was filtering through the half-open blinds to bar them both with light and dark, and neither of them was smoking. If the bruise on the girl’s face looked ugly, the ones all over the man’s face were even worse. He looked as if he’d been mugged by someone with a grudge. Riley felt his instincts as a protector kick in, and he knocked on the door more gently than he’d intended.

Even so, they both started like stray cats in an alley when a trashcan went over; the Englishman rising to his feet and positioning himself in front of the girl, who picked up a stapler as if she could wield it as a weapon. They were both trying to look composed and ready to deal with all comers, but Riley could see that they were scared, and the sunlight gilding their bruises was doing nothing to take off how unready they looked.

The Englishman said: “Can I help you?” His voice was taut and he took another step in front of the girl, trying to make it look unobtrusive, the way he was putting himself between her and possible danger, but Riley understood and approved the impulse, even though, frankly, if he’d wanted to go in there and twist the girl’s head off, there wasn’t much this skinny, battered-looking English guy could have done to stop him.

“I just want to ask you a few questions.” Now he sounded as if he was channelling some police detective from a lame B-movie. He tried to keep his tone non-committal, but veered towards soothing, because he couldn’t help feeling sorry for them, they both looked so much in need of rescuing, with rings under their eyes from lack of sleep, and those bruises broadcasting to all comers that they couldn’t hold their own in a fight. The girl was beautiful, with a fall of sleek, brown, softly waving hair, and looked as if she should have been sitting around in a salon somewhere having her nails done, some thousand dollar purse at her feet, and a dress wrapped around her slim body that cost the national debt of an African country. Instead, she was standing there with a stapler in her hand, looking washed out from exhaustion.

“What about?” The girl demanded, stepping up to stand shoulder to shoulder with the Englishman, entirely ruining his protective strategy but lending him support all the same.

“And who are you?” the Englishman asked.

“Cordy, it’s cool, he’s with me.” Xander stepped in through the doorway and held his hands up. Riley noticed that Xander was doing the same as him, giving those two some critical distance, not crowding them. He guessed he wasn’t the only one who thought they looked ready to bolt.

“Xander?” The Englishman looked at him in surprise but visibly relaxed. “Why are you…? Didn’t Buffy get back to Sunnydale?”

“She got home, Wesley.” Xander was clearly assessing their condition with as much surprise as Riley. “What happened to you two?”

So, these two were Cordelia and Wesley; the cheerleader and the failed Watcher, who had ended up working for Buffy’s vampire ex-lover. He had expected Cordelia to look more Paris Hilton and less soup kitchen, and Wesley to be a couple of years older, and both of them to be a lot less bruised. Looking at them, he found his dislike of Angel crank up a few more notches. Apparently, it wasn’t just the people he loved that he left tattered and torn, but the people who worked for him as well.

Wesley looked across at Cordelia, clearly hating the sight of that bruise on her cheekbone as much as Riley did. “It’s not important.” He reached out and gently took the stapler from the girl’s hand, slipping it back onto the desk as if he thought no one would notice. “But I don’t understand why you’re here, if not to look for Buffy?”

“We’re looking for Angel.” Riley stepped into the room another pace and saw them both quiver a little, because he looked bigger and stronger than they did, and they were apparently not comfortable with people with those attributes right now. Another pace and they were clearer still, the sunlight pitiless as it gave him a guided tour of all the rainbow colours of that bruise on Cordelia’s face. He was pretty good at assessing contusions, and the blow that had left that mark must have come perilously close to cracking the bone.

“He’s not here.” Wesley’s voice rose a little, as if he could ward them off, clearly not wanting them to come any closer. As they both took another pace, he dropped his gaze, turning his head as if there was still some way to stop them seeing what had been done to him. Riley winced as he saw that bruise on his forehead, the cut on his right cheekbone, the black eye, the split lip, and the red mottling of newer bruises that were still in the process of coming out. 

Xander went forward cautiously, like they were lost children he didn’t want to spook. “Cordy, Wesley…what happened?”

“Faith was here.” Wesley’s tone was brittle. “But everything’s resolved now. I thought Buffy would have told you.”

“She told us Faith gave herself up for murder and was in prison now.”

“Attempted murder, I think. She’s pleading guilty so I imagine the trial won’t take very long.” 

“Did she do this to you or did you try to tango with a water buffalo?” Xander reached out to hold Wesley’s face still so he could take a look at all the contusions and cuts marking it, and the man jerked his head away, taking a step backwards, voice rising:

“That’s hardly your business, Xander, and, if you want Angel, I’m afraid you’ve come to the wrong place.”

“He’s in Sunnyhell,” Cordelia put in. “Gone to make up with Buffy because he may have hurt her feelings.” Something in her tone suggested that only by the most heroic effort of self-control had she resisted putting in a ‘poor widdle’ there.

“Yes, I’m afraid you’ve had a wasted journey.” Wesley’s tone was firm and he was already trying to usher them back towards the door.

Xander stolidly refused to be backed. “Wesley, stop with the bullshit and tell me what happened to the two of you. Was it Angel or Faith who did this to you?”

Wesley recoiled as if he’d slapped him. “Angel has never laid a finger on us.”

“Except when he knocked you out that time,” Cordelia put in.

“That was Angelus.”

“Well, technically it was Angel with a bad case of Doximal happy time.”

“Nevertheless, he was not in control of his faculties at the time.”

“Like that helped when we were waving goodbye to our TV star client.”

“Cordelia…” 

“So, it was Faith,” Xander persisted quietly. “She did this to you?”

Cordelia shrugged, trying to act as if it didn’t matter, shaking back the wavy shine of her long hair. “You know Faith – big with the fists, small with the self-control.”

Xander grimaced and Riley thought about all he knew about Slayer strength, that surge of primal power that made a young girl able to take on a vampire or a demon; then he thought about that same power being used against another young girl or against an underfed Englishman, neither of whom possessed Slayer strength.

“Have you two seen a doctor?” he pressed.

“What did she do?” Xander asked at the same time.

Wesley looked as if he were a hair away from snapping but it was Cordelia who said venomously: “We don’t need the Sunnydale pity party.”

A part of Riley wanted to be screaming back down the freeway to intercept Angel before he did Buffy any more harm, which he would surely be doing the second it got dark and he could venture out to see her, but he had joined up to help people who couldn’t help themselves and that part of himself utterly rejected the idea of abandoning two people who, at the very least, looked too nerve-shredded to be left alone right now. “I’m not from Sunnydale.” 

When neither of them showed much of a response to that, Xander added: “I should have made the introductions. Riley Finn meet Cordelia Chase and Wesley Wyndam-Pryce. Cordy, Wesley, meet Riley.”

Quickly, Riley shoved out a hand and gave them his best innocent farm boy smile; one that had availed him well in the past. “Pleased to meet you.”

It was apparently impossible for the Englishman not to extend a hand in return, despite clearly not wanting to be sucked into exchanging pleasantries. “Likewise.”

Cordelia also unbent enough to briefly clasp his hand. “So, where are you from?”

“Huxley, Iowa.”

She looked interested. “Oh, I’ve never met anyone from a flyover state before.”

Riley thought about Anya and now Cordelia and wondered why exactly Xander was drawn to women with no tact. However, his birthplace did seem to have broken the ice, as Cordelia could now regard him with some sympathy herself, and already seemed to be feeling less like a victim unready to be observed by a stranger and more like a sophisticate faced with a hayseed. Riley wondered if he should perhaps chew on a straw to put her mind even more at rest.

“Spirit Lake is home to some fascinating demons by all accounts,” Wesley offered, in what was clearly meant to be a compliment.

“Have you two had lunch?” Riley tried to keep his tone cheerful and encouraging, but not, he hoped, too much like talking to the little people. “Because Xander and I were just going out for lunch.” Xander, to his credit, barely started at the bare-faced lie.

“I thought you were looking for Angel?” Wesley countered.

Xander picked up the slack. “We thought after seeing Deadboy we’d be needing food to restore us.”

Riley patted his wallet. “I’m buying.”

That had definitely been a wrong step. If there had been a connection being made, it promptly snapped. Wesley’s expression hardened. “No, thank you.”

Although Cordelia had looked downright wistful, she nodded emphatically. “We’ve already eaten.”

In the thin shafts of sunlight spearing in between the blinds, Riley could see dust motes rising like smoke. Wesley pulled down the cuffs of his long-sleeved sweater self-consciously, but not before Riley had caught a glimpse of more dull crimson bruises and a nasty-looking cut. He realised with a new jolt of unease that there were rope burns under there that Wesley didn’t want them to see. It seemed so much worse, somehow, to be beaten while tied up, than while there was at least a chance of getting away. The sunlight reflected off Wesley’s glasses, temporarily hiding his eyes, and making the bruises seem disconnected from the person behind them, and he remembered Faith’s fingers on him, the strength of her, that he had trusted when he thought she was Buffy, but which made him shudder inwardly with revulsion now. He had been naked in bed with a crazy woman and he hadn’t even known it. Looking at Wesley’s bruises he realised how lucky he had been. 

“I’m sorry you’ve had a wasted journey, but it really would have been prudent to call us first.” Wesley once again tried to usher them to the door. Riley and Xander exchanged a look, both equally out of ideas, yet both on the same page that the mission had now changed; looking for Angel now less of a priority than finding out what had happened to these two and making sure they were okay. 

They were saved by a prematurely balding man in a slightly shabby brown suit, the shoulders of which were lightly flecked with something that looked to Riley – who had grown up surrounded by cousins of various ages – very much like baby vomit. The man gave the impression of being filmed with dust, although a second glance revealed him to be just wearing clothing that hadn’t been pressed and a tie with an egg stain on it. He pushed open the door and stood there, uncertainly, blinking at them. “Are you Angel Investigations?”

LA was a city that hummed with HST activity, the whole city lit up with a Sub Terrestrial glow. Without access to any of his usual equipment, Riley wouldn’t have taken it on trust that a crossing guard was who he appeared to be, or even a dusty little stranger, and Xander seemed to feel the same way. As Xander positioned himself in front of Cordelia, Riley stepped in front of Wesley, who gave him a look of annoyance, said: “Excuse me” pointedly, and walked around Riley to smile at the newcomer. 

“You’ve come to the right place. Can we help you?”

The man looked at Wesley warily. “Are you Angel?”

“I’m his associate, Wesley Wyndam-Pryce. This is Cordelia Chase, and these other two gentlemen – were just leaving.”

“We wouldn’t dream of it.” Riley kept smiling, although his face was definitely starting to hurt now. “We’re always glad to help out fellow…investigators.”

As Cordelia opened her mouth to say something that was probably regrettable, Xander held up his hands. “No, don’t thank us.” He hastily pulled out a chair for the stranger. “Take a load off. Tell us all about your problem. You do have a problem, right?”

Looking between them all in some bemusement, the stranger nevertheless handed across his card – Riley caught a glimpse of a home address – took a seat and sank low into it, gazing up at them mournfully. His forehead was lightly sheened with sweat, and he mopped his brow with a large floral handkerchief as he spoke. “I think my wife may be a demon.” 

Wesley nodded as if he heard such things all the time. Perhaps he did. Riley had already found out in Sunnydale that there was far more weirdness out there than he had ever realized. Wesley sat down opposite the potential client, glancing at the card as he did so. “I can see how that could be a problem, Mr…Winters.”

“Depending on the species,” Xander put in. “Some demons are really quite warm and cuddly and shouldn’t necessarily be blamed for their…past misdeeds.”

The client gazed at Xander in confusion for a moment before turning back to Wesley. “I think she may be planning to eat our baby.”

Xander grimaced. “Okay, that I concede is behaviour that probably veers towards the unacceptable side of….”

“Will you stop already with the talking?” Cordelia hissed in his ear.

Riley noticed that Wesley was nodding sagely a lot and diligently taking notes while the customer’s gaze strayed from his many cuts and bruises, to Cordelia’s bruised cheekbone and back. Riley cranked up his smile and attempted to look as normal as possible when the customer looked his way, but from the reaction guessed that he had just succeeded in spooking him more. He tried looking intent and serious and doing some sage nodding of his own, but that was when the guy began to shove his chair back a few inches. He supposed it was just as well he hadn’t had his heart set on a career in retail.

“So, Mr Winters, you’ve been married to your wife for over a year now, but you’ve noticed certain…physical abnormalities that have made you question whether or not she’s entirely human.”

“I don’t mind them,” Winters put in. “I actually find them quite sexy.”

“Quite so,” Wesley murmured.

“Who doesn’t find the odd scale and vestigial tail a turn on?” Xander shrugged. It bothered Riley that he had no idea if Xander was being serious or not. With Buffy’s friends, one could never be entirely sure. Wesley’s way of resolutely plugging on despite all odds did remind him of Rupert Giles, and he wondered if Watchers were specifically trained to be British at all times.

“You have become concerned in recent weeks by your wife’s behaviour towards your infant son?”

“She’s not just feeding him on demand. She seems to be…fattening him up. He had a normal birth weight but he’s now twice what a child should weigh at his age, and I came across this amulet in her jewelry box.”

Riley craned his neck to get a look and saw that the centre of the bronze-coloured pendant depicted what looked like a human infant being eaten by a long-necked demon. “I presume your wife doesn’t look like this?”

“Once, when I had bad shrimp. And sometimes, she looks a little…fuzzy to me, like she’s not really in focus.”

Wesley nodded again. “A basic glamour would account for that. Not that difficult to maintain, particularly for demons of the Netraxus species, who have some low-level mind-influencing abilities. A hair or skin sample would be useful in trying to ascertain…”

Winters held up a polythene bag wrapped around a hairbrush, and another much smaller bag in which a few solitary hairs could be seen. “This is from my wife, and this is from my son. I really need to know that they’re both…human.”

“Of course.” Wesley took the samples from him. “This won’t take very long.” He disappeared into a back room. Riley tried to get a glimpse, but couldn’t see anything that looked like the gleaming white and silver laboratories of the Initiative.

Cordelia drummed her fingernails on the desk a little awkwardly. “So, you sell shoes? Do you carry Alberta Ferretti?”

Winters looked at her warily, and Riley wondered if he now thought all women might be demons in disguise. As someone who had held someone in his arms who certainly looked and smelled and felt like Buffy and yet had been someone else entirely, he could sympathize. 

“No.” 

“Balenciaga? Ferragamo? Rochas?”

“No.” 

“Well, at least you know your wife didn’t marry you for your shoes….”

Winters’ gaze travelled to Xander and Riley. “So, do you all work for Angel Investigations…?”

“We’re from the Sunnydale branch,” Riley said quickly. “We’re conferring on a case.”

“Two branches.” The client looked impressed. 

“We go where the wacky is,” Xander said cheerfully.

Riley observed Cordelia dig her fingernails into his side with unnecessary force. Xander manfully hung onto his confidence-inducing smile but his eyes were visibly watering. Quickly, Riley said: “So, how did you meet your…wife?”

“On a blind date.” The man looked a little sheepish. “I was introduced to her by the girlfriend of a colleague.”

“Don’t suppose your colleague met his girlfriend at Madame Dorian’s, did he?” Cordelia enquired.

Winters looked sheepish. “Well, yes… Which was why I was a little concerned once the first…you know… had worn off.”

Cordelia sat down behind the computer but Riley heard her murmur quite audibly: “Men – stupidity – synonyms!” She beckoned imperiously to the client. “Do you have a photograph of your wife?”

Riley noticed the man proffered it with a hint of pride, despite only being here because he thought his wife was possibly a baby-eating HST. 

Cordelia gazed at the picture while Riley tried not to crane his neck as obviously as Xander was doing to get a look at it. After a long assessing stare, Cordelia said: “How much do you make in a year, Mr. Winters?”

“About fifty thousand dollars.”

Cordelia nodded as if this was no more than she expected. “Your wife’s a demon.”

Riley was impressed. In the Initiative they had been able to check the energy signal of human-seeming demons and identify them that way, but Cordelia appeared to be using only the power of…deductive reasoning? Feminine intuition? Whatever it was, she seemed to be very sure. 

“She is?” Winters looked dismayed.

Cordelia nodded decisively. “Women who look like that don’t marry guys who look like you, unless you’re millionaires or they’re demons. It’s just one of those immutable laws of physics, like…gravity.”

“That is so shallow.” Xander gazed at her in what looked a little like awe.

“And how many balding, dusty little men who aren’t billionaires have you seen arm in arm with supermodels recently?” Cordelia countered. She seemed to become aware of the client’s expression and grimaced. “No offence.”

Winters patted his bald spot protectively. “I’ve been taking extra vitamins.”

Cordelia was typing rapidly and Riley risked a look over her shoulder to see a site called ‘demons, demons, demons’ appear. A few more rapid keystrokes and he was gazing at a Netraxus Demon, which perfectly matched the demon shown on the amulet. “Good call,” he said in surprise.

“Wesley may not have a life, but he does know his stuff.” Cordelia took a folder from the desk drawer and leafed through it purposefully. 

Now peering unashamedly over her shoulder, Riley saw a neatly typed page headed: ‘Willow’s Instructions For Hacking Into Police Records’. As Cordelia began to implement them, Riley felt uneasy. “You don’t have one of those for accessing top secret military information, do you?” 

Cordelia gave him the first encouraging glance. “You know the hack for that?”

“No, I just… I don’t think you should do it. Because it’s…wrong.” 

Cordelia kept typing. “Who _are_ you anyway?” A glance across at Xander and her eyes widened. “Oh, Harmony always said you were…!” Her gaze swivelled back to Riley and appeared to be taking in every single thing about him, down to the epidermis. “So, you’re wearing those GI Joe clothes for him? Like a role-playing thing? That’s so sweet. Because ever since that mix-up with the Halloween costumes, I’ve always thought Xander has a bit of a thing for…”

Riley would have been more amused by Xander’s expression of appalled embarrassment if he wasn’t feeling a little embarrassed himself. After all, it had been after looking at _him_ , not Xander, that Cordelia leapt to that conclusion. And he did still have those memories of poring over the Jonathan Calendar: Swimsuit Edition. “I’m Buffy’s boyfriend,” he said, he hoped with dignity.

“Oh.” Cordelia’s disappointment was clear. She glanced over Riley again and he felt himself dismissed as far less interesting than he had appeared a moment ago. “She really can pick them, can’t she? Because, just between you and me, Angel isn’t exactly the most….” Cordelia hit the Enter key triumphantly. “Ah hah! I knew it.”

“What?” As Riley and Xander leaned over her shoulder to see, they managed to clash heads painfully. They gave each other another look of embarrassment. Given that they were only staying around to offer Wesley and Cordelia the benefit of their experience and protection, Riley couldn’t help wishing that he and Xander were coming across a little less like Laurel and Hardy. Clutching his skull, he managed: “What did you find?”

Cordelia turned the screen so that they could all see. “There you go – ‘Husband Dies in Freak Accident; Wife and Baby Feared Killed By Street Gang On PCP’.”

Xander nodded to Riley. “In Sunnydale, ‘Street Gang On PCP' equals 'vampire or demon we’re all having collective denial about even when they ate our schoolfriends right in front of us’.”

Riley was reading the account from eye witnesses of a gang of ‘strange-looking people who could have been a biker gang’ seen advancing on a suburban house, in which lived Marty White, a travelling salesman from Pasadena, whose lovely young wife, Marlene, had recently given birth to their first child. By the time the police arrived, Marty appeared to have been involved in a fatal accident with a household blender and there was no sign of Marlene or Baby Thomas. One look at Marlene confirmed that she did indeed to be an extraordinarily beautiful woman, and it was surprising to find her married to an overweight forty-seven year old salesman. Cordelia held up the photograph Winters had supplied wordlessly, and Xander and Riley both peered at it and then looked again at the picture of ‘Marlene’. They appeared to be one and the same.

“But that’s Marika!” Winters exclaimed.

“One of the drawbacks of the basic glamour spell.” Wesley came back from the office. “One payment, one appearance is the usual deal. It has to be maintained with Ikthenian Crystal energy and regular top ups of the usual lizard-wing protein shake and dust from the tomb of an Akkadian sorcerer, of course, but it’s a lot cheaper to stay with the same glamour than start out again with a new one after each scam.” His gaze was kind and regretful. “I regret to inform you, Mr Winters, that your wife is indeed a Netraxan Demon. The materials I have access to here are a little limited but I would be willing to hazard a guess that she’s probably of the Gktr’kl sub-species.”

Cordelia shook her head as she typed. “Never trust people with no vowels in their names. It’s a rule to live by.”

Winters leant back in his chair, looking as if he might be about to pass out. “So, my wife is a demon? And she’s done this before?”

Cordelia hit ‘print’ and the computer began to disgorge garish headlines detailing more men dead in freak accidents and lovely young wives gone missing with their infant sons. “About six times that I’ve been able to find so far. Of course, I only did a search for Los Angeles.”

Winters gazed up at Wesley anxiously. “What about my son? Is he…?”

“Human,” Wesley assured him, although there was a flicker in his eye as he said it that made Riley wonder if he was keeping something from the man. “I’ll research in more detail, but what I know about Nextraxan demons suggests that any sacrifice would be made on the day of the full moon, meaning we have a little time to come up with a strategy to rescue your son from your…wife.” Taking the man by the elbow and gently easing him towards the door, he continued smoothly: “I suggest you call in sick to your place of work and spend a few days at home. We’ll be in touch.”

Riley waited until the door was closed and the last faint sound of departing footsteps had been swallowed by distance before turning to Wesley. “What’s up with the baby?”

Wesley began to select books from the shelves, putting two in front of Cordelia before heading over to the small couch in the corner to work from there. “It’s certainly human, but unlikely to be his. Netraxan demons usually fake a pregnancy while making arrangements to buy or steal the baby they need. There are many complicated rituals that have to be performed before the baby is ready for sacrifice, and that can only be done by someone who is taking care of the child full time. Ironically, the child is probably in good health, although inclined to smell of yak urine in a heated room.”

“But why go through the whole marriage thing?” Xander pressed. 

“Netraxan demons are notoriously lazy, and prefer to be kept whenever possible. Although, in their favour, modern Netraxan demons are becoming resentful of the constrictions of the tribal system, and prefer to make their own way in the world. As long as they make their annual baby sacrifice at the proper juncture, the Netraxan elders are cautiously supportive. As ancient killer demon sects go, they’re considered quite progressive.”

Riley gazed at the man in disbelief. He really did look like nothing at all; far less impressive than Giles, who carried a certain gravitas even when recently concussed; but this guy was so scrawny he was barely visible if he turned sideways, looked fifteen years too young for the task he had been given in Sunnydale, and right now looked in worse shape than that homeless guy Riley had found in a dumpster who had been unfortunate enough to have had a disagreement with a Sdansk demon on the wrong cusp of his lunar cycle. “How do you _know_ all this stuff?”

“I was trained by the Watchers’ Council.” Wesley was already poring over reference books.

“Also – no life,” Cordelia added. 

“But you’re not…as old as Giles,” Riley finished lamely.

Wesley glanced up at him briefly, sunlight falling across his face to reveal all the shades of purple and gold on his forehead. “We start early.” His tongue ventured gingerly over his cut lip, perhaps hoping that the thick scab would have miraculously vanished; an expression of defeat washed over his face as he felt the ridge of dried blood and he bent back over his books.

“So, you could go now?” Cordelia suggested.

“We thought we might hang around and help.” Xander sat on the desk next to her. “Baby-eating demons – kind of what we do.”

“I heard.” Cordelia opened the first book and began to scan it wearily.

“I mean killing them is what we do.”

“Good for you.”

“Cordy…” His exasperation seemed genuine and as she glanced up at him, Riley saw them flashing brown eyes at one another as if this was an old dance whose steps they would never forget. There was such a connection there; he almost saw the moment when they felt it, a tension twanging like the cord beneath a tightrope walker’s chalked feet. A flicker of something that looked like homesickness showed briefly in Cordelia’s eyes, and then she turned a page she hadn’t even looked at and pretended to be all about the research.

“We don’t need you.” She plucked a pen from a holder and began to tap it against her notebook. “This is what we do now, the three of us, and we don’t need any help from Buffy’s little gang of Slayerettes. Okay?”

“But Angel isn’t here.” Xander took the pen from her and held it out of reach. “And I get that it could work – just about – you manage the business, Wesley does the research, Angel kills the big scalies. But you take the supernaturally strong undead guy out of that equation and what you’re left with is…”

“A hell of a lot better than you and Willow going vampire hunting in every cemetery in town without Buffy.”

As Xander opened his mouth to refute, probably with examples, Riley intervened quickly: “The point is, we’re here and we’re happy to help. So, why not let us?”

Wesley looked too weary to offer much resistance, and perhaps he was ready to admit, what Cordelia was not, that without Angel these two were physically not up to much right now. “Well, we can hardly force you to leave if you want to research demons.”

Riley saw Cordelia glance across at him, Wesley’s half-apologetic expression, her sigh of defeat and shrug. She shoved a book at Xander as if she was nothing other than the winner of this argument. “Go crazy.”

A few hours of research later and Wesley had done most of the uncovering of information. None of it good. Riley, for instance, could have lived a long time not knowing that there really were alien creatures whose veins ran with acid. If the Netraxan demon they were tracking was part of the Gktr’kl family, then she would gather with the rest of her clan to perform an annual cleansing ritual – to free any of them from contaminants who had been touched by unclean humans in the interim – which culminated in tearing their stolen infants limb from limb and eating them. Riley couldn’t help thinking that some counselling about not sleeping with things that brought you out in hives might be a better approach, but it didn’t seem to be one the Netraxan species had considered. A clan group could be as small as three but could be as many as forty. Three was doable, despite the acid-for-blood problem, but forty was going to need a platoon. Something he didn’t have any more. 

Riley had also discovered that although Cordelia seemed to be shallow and shoe-obsessed she also researched as if she meant it, and that Wesley knew far too much about demons to be healthy.

Now Wesley rubbed his right eye wearily and then winced as the pain reminded him that it was bruised. “You see what this means?”

Riley saw all too clearly. “It’s not enough to save Winters’ son. We have to find out where the ritual is going to take place, so we can save all the babies.”

The surprise and relief on Wesley’s face that he had grasped it was almost insulting. “Precisely.”

“I suppose this wouldn’t be a good time to point out that what we could really do with around now is a bunch of highly trained demon-killing soldiers with lots of high-tech equipment?” Xander observed. As Wesley and Cordelia both looked blank, he added: “Riley used to be part of a super secret demon-killing commando operation.”

“Not Brachen demons though, right?” Cordelia said at once.

Riley noticed Wesley making urgent gestures to him, and followed his lead to give a firm assurance that no, absolutely no Brachen demons had ever been captured by the Initiative. He had no idea what a Brachen demon was, as they didn’t give their HSTs the same names that the Watcher’s Council did, but he did know that he absolutely did not want Cordelia coming after him with that stapler.

“Good.” Cordelia spun around from the computer screen and gave him a dazzling smile. “That means I don’t have kill you.”

“That’s…good to hear.” Riley wondered what it was about Sunnydale that produced these dangerous young women, and what it was about him that rather liked them being that way. He could still remember Buffy slamming him down onto the mat with all that super power of hers, and the unexpected thrill that had gone through his body at the realization that this slender, beautiful girl could snap him like a twig. Probably not a realization to share with the military psychiatrist when he had his next assessment….

It was a shock to realize that he would never have another assessment, because everything he had trained for, everything he had believed in, he could no longer trust and was no longer a part of. Somehow he had ended up on the side of the people who sheltered vampires and harboured werewolves, and he understood why that made him look like a traitor, but he knew absolutely that he had chosen the right side. Which didn’t mean that it didn’t cause him a pang in moments like these when he realized that, like a bereavement, he was letting go of the military only by degrees, and that it hurt to know he was outside of something that had once kept him safe. It occurred to him that Wesley must have undergone something of the same process when he was fired by the Watcher’s Council.

“I think we can take it from here.” 

Riley looked up in shock to find Wesley giving him a ‘you can go now’ smile that looked strange battling all those bruises.

“What?” Xander articulated, saving Riley having to.

Wesley tapped the book in front of him. “We now know that the Gktr’kl clans sacrifice their infants in group gatherings, meaning that Mr Winters’ son is in no immediate danger, until the next gathering. By which time, Angel will be back in LA and can decide how best to proceed.” He gave a light laugh that sounded entirely false. “It would be a very unfortunate coincidence indeed for the day of the clan sacrifice to coincide with the day when Winters decided to…”

Which was when Cordelia jolted back violently, with a hand clutched to her forehead. Apparently, years of fighting demons had given Xander unusually good reflexes, because he caught her and held her up even as Riley sprang across the room to help. It was a little like holding a human eel, the girl snapping backwards and forwards in their arms while she emitted odd little half-sentences that Riley assumed were the result of her synapses overloading from what seemed to be a stroke.

“…abandoned warehouse…big pentagram…lots of candles….ooh – babies!”

Xander looked as distressed as Riley felt, stroking the girl’s dark hair back from her face every time another whiplash of her spine sent it tangling across her eyes. She was clutching Xander’s arm so hard as she staggered and twisted that Riley thought the boy would have bruises there for a week. Riley tried to help, but her struggles were too violent, and he snatched at the phone instead, beginning to dial 911. 

A bony finger came down to disconnect him. “What are you doing?” Riley rose to his feet, angrily. “That girl needs an ambulance.”

“Actually, she needs a notepad.”

Confused, Riley watched as Wesley picked up a notepad and pencil, both of which he held out as the last convulsion finished. “What is up with you, Wesley?” Xander tenderly stroked a last tangle of hair out of Cordelia’s eyes, holding her trembling body in his arms. “Cordy? Are you okay?”

Cordelia snatched the pad and pencil from Wesley and scribbled rapidly. Riley watched a little dazedly as Wesley wordlessly followed up the pad and pencil with two aspirin and a bottle of water, that he opened for her. She dropped the pad on the table and took the tablets and water, gulping down the pills with long, cooling swallows of water. Only then did she seem to become aware that she was more or less sitting on Xander’s lap, with his arms around her. “Do you mind?” she demanded. 

“Cordelia,” Wesley said in mild reproach. “Xander stopped you from falling.”

“Yeah, well, he forfeited the right to have his hands where they are right now when he got smoochie with Miss Adorable Little Redhead TM.” Xander snatched his hands away from her at once, looking stricken. Cordelia blinked, mind effortlessly shifting tracks. “How is Oz anyway?”

“Still a werewolf, but unvivisected.” Riley gazed at the pad on which an address had been scrawled and a picture of a goblet. “What just happened?”

“Cordelia had a vision.” Wesley hooked a stray strand of the girl’s hair behind her ear and gazed at her with quiet concern. “Are you all right?”

“Apart from the road-drill in my head you mean? Peachy.”

Wesley smiled, apparently reassured by her sarcasm, and Cordelia gave him a glimmer of a smile back, before pressing her hand harder against her forehead. “If I ever meet those Powers, I’m going to poke them with something pointy.”

“A what?” Xander demanded. “She had a what?”

“A psychic vision from the Powers That Be,” Wesley offered as if it were an explanation, even though a quick glance across at Xander’s expression, confirmed for Riley that it really wasn’t. Wesley ducked his head to meet Cordelia’s eye. “What did you see?”

Cordelia stabbed a finger at the address. “The baby-eating scalies are having their supper party tonight on the docks. We’ve got maybe an hour to get there, which would be fine, except we have to go to Winters’ first. They’re going to be killing him in twenty minutes.”

Riley watched the weariness wash over both their faces, and then Wesley was resolutely pulling an axe from a desk drawer and Cordelia was picking out a crossbow.

“No way.” Xander stepped in between them. “Cordy, you just had what looked like the world’s most painful seizure, and Wesley looks like he got chewed up and spat out by a cement mixer.”

Riley snatched up the piece of paper before Wesley could reach for it. “Xander’s right.”

Wesley glanced at Cordelia. “I trust you memorized the address?”

She nodded, resolute despite the obviously searing pain in her head.

As Cordelia and Wesley both stepped around him, Xander hastily backed up to block the exit. “And how are you going to get there anyway?”

“We have a car.” Riley also stepped forward to intervene, trying to give them an encouraging smile when he felt like tackling them both to the ground. “We can take you there.”

Ignoring both of them, Cordelia said to Wesley. “You have your bike, right?”

“Of course.” Wesley headed purposefully for the door, Cordelia right behind him.

“Excuse me.” She glared with laser bolt of death eyes at Xander and Riley – who had to admit he might well have backed down at that point. Xander, however, seemed to have encountered a full on Cordelia Chase glare before, and glared right back.

“No way in hell, Cordy. Or any demon dimension of your choice. You let us come with or we handcuff you both to the desk.” 

Her glare was on full beam now, outraged and furious, and Riley found a whole new admiration for Xander’s nerve. He might not have super strength or soldier training, but he evidently had testicles of steel. 

“I don’t date you anymore,” Xander continued implacably. “You have limited ways to hurt me.”

She held up the crossbow as if she meant it then narrowed her eyes and lowered it to point it at his groin. “Don’t bank on it.”

Wesley hastily shoved the crossbow down so it was aimed at the floor, but gave Xander a glare of his own. “I really wouldn’t advise provoking Cordelia when she’s just suffered a vision. Nor would I recommend getting in our way.”

Xander held his gaze steadily. “I meant what I said, Wesley. You’re not getting out of here without us. I’m not pretending to be Buffy, but we both know I could take you right now and I’m not letting either one of you walk into that kind of danger without back up.”

Riley held up his hands. “Look, we all want the same thing here – to save those babies from being eaten by demons. Tell me any way that isn’t more likely to work with four of us helping rather than just two?”

That seemed to get through as nothing else had. A look of defeat washed over Wesley again and he shrugged. “By all means. Let’s go together. As you put it so nicely, how can we refuse?” He sounded bitter as well as tired, and Riley didn’t blame him. They had just told him in front of a girl he had evidently already failed to protect once that he wasn’t up to protecting her or himself and they all knew it. That had to hurt.

They made their way down to the car in silence, and when they reached it, Wesley held open the passenger door for Cordelia and then wordlessly slid into the back next to Xander. 

“You’ll need to direct me.” Riley gave the girl what he hoped was an encouraging smile, but she kept staring straight ahead, still angry.

“Take a left,” was all she said. They drove out to do battle together against baby-eating demons in a tight-lipped silence in which the bruises throbbing on Wesley and Cordelia’s faces seemed to make too loud a clamour to allow for any other conversation.

***

They made it through Winters’ front door with thirty seconds to spare. As Cordelia snatched up the baby and Wesley grabbed Winters and ushered him out, the demons were coming in through the back door to assist his furious ‘wife’. The next few minutes were crowded, scary, and painful. Yet, it was as he stabbed a Netraxan demon with a screwdriver that Xander threw him that Riley realized he was actually enjoying himself. He left the screwdriver in the wound, to avoid any acid blood spurting out, and watched the creature topple and fall with a sense of a job well done. At least he felt useful when protecting people from evil baby-eating demons. All the same, he was glad that Winters’ wife let her glamour go and reverted to her real form as she threw herself at him, screaming with rage. Otherwise there was no way that he could have just snapped her neck; and even with her undoubtedly scaly and clawed in appearance, he couldn’t help thinking of the way she had appeared when they opened the door, and giving a little shudder as he let her fall.

Xander didn’t exactly fight like a soldier, but he fought as if he meant it; even when two demons came straight at him, it didn’t seem to occur to him that he was outnumbered and outmatched, and that not getting between them and their fleeing prey might be a good idea. He punched one – not very efficiently but it still slowed it up – and stabbed the other – unscientifically but with a lot of force – in the side, jerking out of the way of the acidid spurt of blood as if he had been doing it all his life. That one backhanded the boy straight into the nearest wall, but Xander just gave himself a shake and staggered back to his feet, diving after the demon as it set after Cordelia and the baby, and wrapping his arm around its neck. It elbowed him repeatedly in the guts, making him grunt and gasp and look as if spewing was not out of the question, but he still hung on. 

Even as Riley buried a borrowed dagger in the neck of the Netraxan demon he was fighting and dived across the room to help Xander out, he was filled with a whole new appreciation for the young man’s courage and determination. It was scary enough to think of Buffy being out there every night from the age of sixteen, fighting these things, but scarier still to think of a sixteen year-old Xander and Willow doing the same thing without super powers. Knowing how bruised he invariably was after fighting demons, and that was with military training, equipment, and protective clothing, he was amazed that Xander was still throwing himself into the thick of things.

He punched the demon hard in the stomach and received a back hand for his trouble, which knocked him across the room.

“Xander!” 

Wesley looked gaunt and grim, appearing in the doorway and throwing the boy a sword as if he and Xander had fought side by side for years. As the demon slammed Xander against the kitchen cabinets and made to go after Wesley, Xander hung on grimly with his left arm and drove the sword straight through the demon’s ribs, hollowing his stomach to avoid the blood spurt. Its claws were an inch from tearing off Wesley’s face when it went down, gurgled, and lay still. 

Riley staggered painfully to his feet, holding his ribs but feeling the adrenalin flowing. He hurried over to offer a hand to Xander, who grimaced as he let himself be pulled up. Wesley surveyed the dead demons whose gore spattered the kitchen in all directions. Where the blood had landed, it had eaten through the formica, paint and floor tiles, but by a miracle it had not touched them.“Are you okay?”

Riley dusted himself off, catching his breath. “Fine. Where’s Winters?”

Wesley bent and picked up one of the Netraxan daggers, wiped off the blade, and then pocketed it. “We put him in a cab and sent him to the police station. Detective Lockley may not like us much, but she does recognize that demons are a genuine threat to the civilian populace.” He looked at his watch and grimaced. “We don’t have a lot of time to get to the docks.”

Cordelia appeared at a run. “Wes!”

“I know.” He held out his hand for the keys. “You’d better let me drive. I know the way.”

When Riley tossed him the keys, Wesley turned on his heel and headed for the car without another word. Despite having been through a battle together, Wesley still felt grim and distant, and Riley felt a flare of annoyance that was doused almost immediately when he saw how stiffly Wesley was moving. If the man’s body was as bruised as his face, he must already feel as if he had been ten rounds with a Netraxan, and, from what Riley could tell, had received no medical treatment or even much rest since. He glanced at Xander and saw that he had a cut above his eye that was trickling a thin line of blood. “Are you okay?”

Xander nodded, wiping his head. “Ask anyone in Sunnydale – I have a thick skull. You?”

“I’m good.” Riley didn’t mention his aching ribs, and noticed that Xander was making a conscious effort not to limp. He really hoped there were going to be only three demons waiting for them on the docks, and not forty. They had to run to catch up with Wesley and Cordelia, not certain that those two would wait for them. Given the way Wesley already had the engine running as they threw themselves in the backseat, Riley thought it was quite possible that one more second’s delay and the man would have gone without them.

It was starting to get dark, that granular twilight in which oncoming headlights dazzled out of slanting rain, but Wesley drove as if he had grown up in LA, far too fast, cutting in on the inside, running lights, foot to the floor all the way. Three seconds into the journey and they had both been scrambling to do up their seatbelts. Now, Riley saw that, next to him on the back seat, Xander was also pressing back against the upholstery with his foot pressed to the floor as if that could reduce the speed and their fender-bending closeness to the van in front of them. Wesley stepped hard on the brake, wrenched the wheel around and found space that didn’t exist by borrowing liberally from the sidewalk. Next to him, checking the map, Cordelia didn’t so much as blink.

“So, you do this often?” Riley asked, still pressing back against the upholstery.

Cordelia shrugged. “The Powers – omnipotent and all but not too hot when it comes to understanding how the LA rush hour impacts on an ETA.”

They ran a red light at an intersection, taking a left hand turn across the nose of three lanes of rain-hazy headlights and made the corner on two wheels to the blare of indignant horns. 

Riley risked a glance at Xander who gave him a sickly smile. “At least fighting acid-bleeding baby-eating demons is now looking a lot more inviting than staying in this car,” Xander murmured.

Winding the window down in the hope of gulping in some fresh air along with the gas fumes, Riley caught the salt scent of the sea. They must be getting close to the docks – Wesley cut in front of a six wheeler on the inside, wrenched the wheel to the right, and ran another red light – if they lived that long. 

“Here! It’s here!” Cordelia pointed to a turning between warehouses that they had absolutely overshot and could not possibly make – 

Wesley hauled on the handbrake and spun the wheel around. There was a horrifying split second when Riley and Xander were both hurled forward, then yanked back by their seatbelts. Riley waited for the vehicle to just rip open, and then it was obediently jerking around on its squealing tires with a whiplash ferocity that jolted straight through Riley’s spine. Wesley was flooring the gas pedal even before he released the handbrake. The car flew through the air at rocket ship velocity before hitting the ground so hard that Riley swore he felt a crown crack.

“My suspension,” Xander gasped helplessly.

Wesley said: “Was there a number on the warehouse?”

Cordelia closed her eyes. “E-48.”

Wesley floored the gas pedal until metal screamed as they snarled up between boxes and crates. Cordelia’s cry of recognition had both Xander and Riley tensing for another horrific handbrake turn, and as Wesley wrenched the wheel around, Riley felt the jolt jerk from the soles of his feet to the top of his skull. 

“Please make him stop doing that….” Xander whimpered.

Riley thought Wesley was going to drive straight into the doors of the warehouse, but he veered away at the last minute and just spun the car around sideways, leaving it with the engine running, before snatching up a sword and heading for the small entrance door at sprinter speed. Cordelia was a foot behind him, long dark hair flying loose, and an axe gleaming in her hand. As Wesley ran he was wriggling out of his jacket, holding it in the hand that wasn’t gripping the sword. Riley yanked at his seatbelt and then struggled out of the car, with Xander on his heels. Wesley slid back the door and seven demons turned in expectation, clearly anticipating the arrival of Winters’ late wife and her borrowed baby. Wesley sprinted across the warehouse while the Netraxans were still staring at them in confusion. Riley understood why – the head of the demons had a baby on the altar and a knife in its hand – but that didn’t make it any less crazy. 

As Wesley ran through their ceremonial pentacle, the demons snarled with rage and the priest-demon drew back the knife to drive into the baby’s heart. Which was when Wesley threw the jacket he carried over the baby and sliced down with his sword to cut off the demon’s stabbing arm. As the demon screamed with rage and pain, Wesley ducked the spurt of its blood and then kicked it hard in the midriff to drive it and its acidic gore a few paces further back. He whipped the smouldering acid-spattered jacket off the baby before the blood ate all the way through the cloth and held it up as a shield as he drove his sword into the demon’s heart. More blood spattered on the jacket as Wesley ducked behind it and then threw the cloth down fast before it ate through and reached his skin. 

“Cordelia, get the babies,” he shouted. “Stay away from the demons.”

Which was when a Netraxan grabbed him and hurled him into a pile of crates. There was no time to see if Wesley was only winded or had broken every bone in his body, as the other demons were trying to get to the baby on the altar. Riley swung the axe he had borrowed, hoping that Xander would protect the girl, and got the demon who had tossed Wesley ten feet through the air so easily between the shoulderblades. It roared and staggered, and he had to twist his head out of the way as he yanked the axe out, to avoid the blood spatters that came with it. Another chop with all his strength and it went down and didn’t move. He turned to see a demon lash at Xander with raking claws and the boy dance back, jerking his head out of the way like a prize fighter hanging on for the next bell and then brandishing his sword in warning. 

“Bad, baby-killing demons,” Xander told them. “Stay.”

Xander was blocking the demons’ access to Cordelia, who was, in her turn, blocking the route to the screaming babies who had been dumped in what looked like a demonic shopping cart. Riley snatched the baby from the altar and ducked a vicious lash of demon claws, kicking out hard to send the demon staggering backwards. With the baby still clutched in his arms, he spun and kicked again, a move he had been taught by Buffy – something that probably looked a lot more graceful when she did it, but certainly was effective as his right foot hit the demon hard in the chest and sent it flying. He thrust the baby at Xander and slammed his elbow into the head of the next demon that launched itself at them.

Wesley staggered out of the boxes, shaking his head, but still alive and apparently in one piece. He was even still holding his sword. As Xander shoved the wailing baby in with the other wailing babies and punched another demon to hold it off, he shouted: “Cordelia, get the babies in the car and away from here.” A demon grabbed him around the throat and began to make what seemed to be a serious attempt to pull his head off.

“Yeah, because that will only leave the three of you trapped here with the killer demons and no escape!” she shouted back, grabbing hold of the shopping cart all the same. She looked across at Wesley for confirmation and he nodded.

“Do it,” he said, before bringing up his sword to ward off the dagger with which a Netraxan demon was making a serious attempt to fillet him. Riley kicked out at the demon trying to get to him, torn between helping Xander, helping Wesley, and helping Cordelia, and in the meantime, with his hands full trying to keep back a demon he couldn’t afford to let bleed on him.

She was running full tilt for the door when the demon jumped out of the shadows and grabbed her by the hair, dragging her away from the shopping cart, which went speeding on towards the open doorway. At the sound of Cordelia’s scream, Xander abruptly went limp, surprising the demon tugging at his neck, and as it slackened its grip, flung his head back with skull cracking force. The demon went down like a felled ox, crunching the back of its skull on the concrete. Xander was running even as it hit the ground. He flung himself at the demon slashing at Cordelia, tearing it away from her with sheer determination, and flinging it into a pile of crates.

Wesley took a slash to the arm from the Netraxan dagger and stabbed it through the heart with his sword, twisting his body away to try to escape the spraying blood as he pulled out the blade. He was only partially successful and as he saw the blood spatter on Wesley’s shirt, and heard the man cry out, Riley slammed his elbow into the frontal lobe of the demon clawing at his neck with strength enough to feel bone crunch and flung himself across to help the Englishman. He grabbed a double handful of Wesley’s shirt and ripped it from his body with all his strength, throwing it away from both of them where it hissed and sizzled, emitting a choking cloud of green smoke.

“Cordelia….” Wesley spun around, coughing from the fumes, and with blood running from his mouth. 

Riley twisted to look as well, horrified to see that Cordelia lay crumpled in broken crates, and one demon had Xander’s arms pinned behind his back while a second had its claws raised to slash open his stomach – and he and Wesley were on the wrong side of the warehouse to help. As he began to run, Wesley did the same, and he automatically reached out to steady him without looking at him, just habit now to know where the civilians were, know where the demons were, and to try to keep the first protected from the second. They were still twenty feet away when Cordelia threw herself off the boxes, snatching up the knife Xander had dropped when he was flung away from her, and, as the demon brought down its clawed hand to scoop out the boy’s guts, stabbed it two-handed in the back. As it screamed with rage, she jerked out the dagger and stabbed it again and then again, staggering as she pulled out the knife, and barely twisting her head away in time as its blood spattered across her blouse.

By a near-superhuman effort which Riley guessed must come from his desperate need to get to the girl, the boy slammed the demon holding him back against a pillar savagely, and then twice more, until it went limp. Then Xander flung himself across to Cordelia, who was desperately pulling at her smouldering blouse. He helped her to rip the flimsy thing off and they threw it away, she wiping her fingers desperately on her slacks, hair tangled and blood trickling from a cut on her head. Xander wiped at her skin with his bare hands, trying to get off the last spatters and then scraping the burning liquid off on his jeans. He pulled off his jacket and wrapped it around her shoulders, pulling her in close. “It’s okay,” he said. “Cordy, it’s off.”

For a moment as she clung to him and he held her so tightly, his arms wrapped around her and his mouth against her forehead, Riley wondered if they had both forgotten that they were no longer dating and this was not the person to whom they owed the most comfort. Then Xander was stroking her hair back from her face with great tenderness. “Are you okay?”

Riley felt something twist inside him, because the concern for her in Xander’s eyes was so raw and for that moment as she clung to him, it was clear that she was nothing other than comforted by him. And then another second passed and Xander seemed to realize that he had pressed against his body the bare skin of a woman wearing only a bra and slacks whom he was no longer dating, and Cordelia became aware of the same thing, pulling away in embarrassment. She turned her back on him to slip her arms through the sleeves of his jacket and button it rapidly, and when she turned back it was with a conscious effort to appear in control. “Thank you,” she said coolly.

Xander forced a smile. “You’re welcome.” 

Riley realised he still had hold of Wesley’s arm, as if he thought the guy might fall over without him to support him. “Are you okay?” As he turned to look at him, he saw the criss-crossing cuts all over his bare shoulders and chest and couldn’t stop his exclamation of shock.

Wesley took a step away from him, the sword slipping from his fingers in his exposure, while Riley couldn’t help staring in horror. There were so many bruises, the clear imprint of a shoe marking the left side of his ribs, and then all those marks left by fists where Faith had apparently used him as a punching bag before cutting him with something that had left this ugly tracery of scabs. It was worse somehow that there was a pattern of sorts, starting from his left shoulder and heading in a sweeping semi-circle across his chest to his right shoulder. The cut on his right cheek, and that livid black eye, which had looked so bad before, now receded as if Riley was staring down a tunnel and all that was in focus were those cuts, slash after slash, shallow and spiteful and so carefully symmetrical that there was no question that they had been cut slowly, quarter of an inch by quarter of an inch.

Riley knew he should stop staring, but it was as if Wesley were a car-wreck and he just couldn’t stop himself from looking even though he knew he should avert his eyes.

Wesley closed his eyes, clearly feeling humiliated by this exposure of his injuries, and started to say: “It looks worse than…” but couldn’t quite get himself to say aloud so absolute a lie.

Belatedly recovering, Riley almost tore his combat jacket in his speed to get it off and wrapped around the man’s slashed shoulders, fingers shaking a little with shock as he did so. Not meeting his eye, Wesley swallowed. “Thank you.”

“You’re welcome.” Riley still felt cold with shock. He had seen some horrific things that demons had done, but they usually just wanted a meal, they didn’t tend to cut up their victims slowly for fun. It made it so much worse that this was a human being who had done this, and not even some insane stranger who came out of the dark and vanished back into it. He had held the girl in his arms who had done this, touched her skin, kissed her lips. She had felt so fragile, and it made it worse that a part of him still felt sorry for her. She had been even more damaged than he realized. The proof of how much she had been hurt written all over Wesley’s body in cuts and bruises, her own version of pay it forward carved into his skin. 

“Why did she…?”

Wesley zipped up Riley’s jacket. It was far too big for him, but the breadth of the shoulders ensured the sleeves fell so far that only his fingers were visible, completely concealing those rope burns and cuts around his wrists. “Payback. I wasn’t a very good Watcher to her. And because she wanted to make Angel angry.”

The cold shock was giving way to a hot anger, because Angel had gone away and left them after _this_? “Did it?” he said tautly. “Did it make him angry?”

“Not as much as she hoped.” Wesley met his gaze for the first time, weary and hollow-looking, as if what Faith had done to his skin was nothing to what she had done to him inside. “Angel recognized that it was a cry for help.”

Riley felt the bitterness flood his mouth, those slashes and cuts still dancing in front of his eyes. “Oh, was that what it was?” He had a whole lot more he wanted to say about what it looked like to him, which was sadistic and protracted torture at the hands of an expert who, however troubled, was surely in less need of help and protection than the victim of her anger.

The wail of crying babies permeated and Wesley seemed glad of the interruption. “We’d better call Detective Lockley.” He gingerly picked up his acid-pocked jacket and delved into its ruined pockets, digging out a cellphone. 

Wesley placed the call, dealt with what seemed to be a fairly pissed cop, who nevertheless promised to come down with social services at once to collect the babies, and then wearily stumbled out to the car. It was only after he had opened the trunk and looked into the unfamiliar contents that he seemed to remember this wasn’t Angel’s car. A shimmer of culture shock running through him like a heat haze. “Oh…” He put a hand up to his clearly thumping head, leaning against the bodywork. “We need rock salt.”

Xander pulled back the blankets to produce a box of rock salt, along with all manner of weaponry and a few spell books. “So, they’re the dissolve-y kind of demons, not the dismember-y kind?”

Wesley nodded, swaying a little. Riley made to take his arm and then thought of those cuts and held off. “Why don’t you sit this one out, Wesley? Xander and I will get rid of the bodies.”

The man probably would have argued, already trying to struggle upright, but Cordelia swiftly plonked a crying baby in his arms. “Here. Make soothing noises. I’ll take care of the others.” Wesley looked down at the tiny wailing thing in shock, and then slowly stretched out a finger which it gripped tightly. His expression of disbelief at how tiny it was coupled with reverence for how miraculous all its perfections were, was one that Riley had felt cross his own face a dozen times when introduced to new cousins, but it certainly took Wesley’s mind off anything except trying to comfort it. Cordelia picked up the other crying baby and rocked it gently. 

As he backed towards the warehouse, Riley looked back at them, Angel’s two skinny, dark-haired associates in their outsized borrowed jackets, both murmuring soothing things to wailing infants, while looking so battered and exhausted that a strong gust of wind would knock them over. He turned to find Xander also gazing at them.

“I’m not leaving them here.” Xander’s expression dared him to argue with him and Riley shrugged.

“I’m all for kidnapping them if you are, but I don’t think they’re going to come willingly.”

Xander shook his head. “Have I mentioned today how very much I _don’t_ like Angel?”

To a background music of wailing babies, Riley and Xander wearily salted Netraxan demon corpses. By the time the beautiful but bad-tempered police woman had arrived with the representatives from social services, the demons were only faintly bubbling circles of green acid on the warehouse floor. “I’m going to need a statement,” she said tersely.

“Can’t it keep?” Cordelia demanded. “We got less sleep than you did last night, especially Wesley – I at least got to catch a few hours being unconscious.”

Detective Lockley did cast a quick appraising glance over Wesley, but didn’t visibly soften. “Maybe you two should be more careful about the company you keep.”

Xander stepped forward angrily and Riley hastily caught his arm and stepped in front of him, trying out his best reassuring smile. He flashed his ID, hoping she didn’t insist on running it through the system and telling the Initiative where he was. “I’m sorry, Detective. This is army business now. We’re happy to pass the babies over to you to be reunited with their parents, but we really can’t divulge any information about how we retrieved them.”

The detective looked a lot less impressed than he had hoped. “I can tell you how you retrieved them – you chopped up a bunch of crazy baby-sacrificing demons with various illegal weapons and then threw salt on their remains.”

“I can’t confirm or deny that, ma’am.” He kept smiling as blandly as possible. “But I really do need to get Mr. Pryce and Ms. Chase back for their debriefing now.” She gazed at him long and hard and he kept gazing back, still keeping it light and friendly and absolutely not backing down an inch.

She snorted in derision and shrugged, gave Wesley and Cordelia a look that was half pitying and half contemptuous, and then turned away. “Tell your boss, he and I still have unfinished business,” she told them, but then she was walking away, and Riley grabbed Wesley’s elbow in one hand and Cordelia’s in the other and quick marched them to the car.

“Just so you know – you’re not going to be debriefing anything, soldier boy,” Cordelia told him firmly. Given that the girl was so exhausted she could barely put one foot in front of the other, Riley was once again forced into unwilling admiration for her stubborn determination to pretend that she and Wesley were coping just fine and needed no help from anyone.

Xander pointed at Wesley. “He’s not driving.”

Wearily, Wesley slid into the back seat. “I assure you, I only break traffic laws when time is of the essence.”

“I don’t care.” Xander firmly slid into the driver’s seat, turned the key in the ignition, and drove back to the offices of _Angel Investigations_ at a very pointed five miles below the speed limit.

***

Getting information out of Cordelia and Wesley was a little like pulling teeth, but all the way back to the office, Riley persisted in his best bright-and-breezy tone while Xander helped him out. It felt a little like they were a comedy double act doing pratfalls for the world’s toughest Monday night crowd, but Wesley was too polite not to answer a direct question when it was aimed at him, and Cordelia, despite her loyalty to Angel, still had some Issues which kept her chipping in, so, however unwillingly it had been offered, they had finally got the facts out of them. Faith had come to LA. Faith had accepted the contract on Angel’s life, not because she wanted to kill him, but because she wanted Angel to murder her. When everything she had done to him and to Buffy had not proven enough for the vampire to come at her with sufficient anger, she had concussed Cordelia and kidnapped Wesley, torturing him so that when Angel kicked in the door of the apartment where she was holding his friend, what he would see would be enough to make him lose it. But Angel still hadn’t lost it. He had saved the damsel in distress, despite everything she had done to those who loved him. Even more bizarrely, when the Watchers’ Council had offered Wesley the chance to get even with the woman who had tortured him, he had sided with her against them and, just like Buffy and Angel, risked his own life to save hers, irretrievably burning his boats with his former employers in the process.

The pool of silence spread out from that final explanation until it seemed to seep into the upholstery.

Riley wished he didn’t understand. If anyone had told him that he would sacrifice the career that mattered to him so very much, give up being part of something he believed in, alienate himself from people who he had always thought felt the same way that he did, to save a werewolf, he would have assumed the person telling him was on some kind of mind-altering drugs. Sometimes a man had to hold onto what was right even when everyone around him was telling him otherwise. He had known that it was right to save a teenage boy from being experimented on, whatever he might become on occasion, just as Wesley had apparently known that it was right to save a teenage girl from being assassinated, however troubled she might be.

“I didn’t do it for her,” Wesley offered, a little defensively, perhaps concerned about being labelled a masochist with a martyr complex. “I did it because I trust Angel’s judgement.”

“Oh, well, that makes it _so_ much better.” Xander took both hands off the wheel to raise them to heaven and Riley had to grab the wheel to keep it steady.

“He’s earned it,” Wesley insisted.

Riley noticed that for the first time Cordelia was not coming in with the support and agreement. He glanced over the seat her. “You don’t agree?”

Before Cordelia could answer, Wesley said: “We’re in the business of saving souls. That’s what we do. Faith was a soul in need of saving.”

“Really?” Xander glanced in the rearview mirror and seemed to be holding Wesley’s gaze. “I thought she was a psychopath who tried to steal my friend’s life and get her killed before coming to LA, where, along with other assorted counts of anti-social behavior, she beat the crap out of you.”

Stolidly, Wesley repeated: “Saving Faith was the right thing to do. And Buffy must have come around to Angel’s way of thinking, because she helped to save her as well.” Riley was sure he wasn’t the only one who heard that silent ‘so there’ which Wesley was mentally adding to that sentence. It was, however, an unanswerable argument, and they drove the rest of the way in silence.

 

Despite being so tired that Riley had been thinking he would need to carry them up the stairs to the office, Wesley and Cordelia both waved off any offers of assistance, and led the way up to the office with a hopeful look on their faces that made him and Xander exchange another grimace.

Cordelia pushed open the office door and looked around expectantly, while Wesley opened the door into the inner office and gazed in; as if there was a missing piece of themselves they were hoping to recover. His narrow shoulders slumped when the room turned out to be empty, a grey weariness washing over his face as he turned away. Cordelia couldn’t keep the disappointment from her voice as she said: “I thought he might be back by now.”

Watching them, Riley was reminded of latchkey kids coming home from school, hoping there would be a parent there to greet them, but instead finding that once again they would be cooking their own supper. Was that what Angel was to them? Not just their employer but their surrogate father? And did that make Buffy the wicked stepmother in their lives? And what the heck did that make him? He realized his head was already starting to thump just thinking about it. 

Wesley checked the office phone for messages and then sighed. “Perhaps he’s decided to stay the night in Sunnydale.”

Cordelia rolled her eyes. “How long does it take to say ‘Sorry I was a jerk’ anyway?”

“There were faults on both sides.” Wesley automatically closed the open books and began to put them in a pile. “Things were very different for them when they were in Sunnydale. And it’s natural that they are going to need a period of adjustment to this new arrangement.” He picked up the books and winced as their weight tugged at his injuries.

“Here, let me.” Riley plucked the top six books off the pile, earning himself a glare from Wesley which he pretended not to notice. Sometimes it was useful to be a cornfed boy from Iowa, a guy could pretend to be a lot denser than he really was and could usually get away with it. “They go in the back office, right?” 

He led the way while, behind him, Cordelia said pointedly to Xander: “Why are you two still here? The babies are all saved now.”

“We just want to make sure you’re okay.” 

Xander was leaning against the wall, looking as unhappy as Riley felt. Turning back to Wesley, Riley found that the guy was putting books back onto shelves with dogged determination. As he straightened up, the light caught the wet gleam of blood on his neck and Riley caught hold of the collar of his combat jacket and pulled it back to look at the wound in concern. A diagonal slice on his neck that had broken open and was weeping red tears. He touched the skin next to it in concern, already wondering where they kept the First Aid kit around here: “Is that from a claw?”

He felt Wesley tremble under his fingers, like a tree shivering in a breeze. He had been so brisk and controlled throughout the evening, but his voice had a crack in it as he said, with a pleading note that hurt Riley like the skewering demon barb that had impaled him: “Please, don’t touch me.” 

Riley snatched his hands away as if Wesley were a hot surface. “Sorry.”

The guy must be so close to cracking. Riley suspected that what Wesley really needed to do was rock and sob, but he couldn’t, because he had used up a lifetime’s allotment of weakness in Sunnydale and had none left now for emergencies. Riley knew he wasn’t the right person for this job, but he was the only other person in the room right now and that seemed to make it his responsibilty to try to say something that might help.

“What Faith did to you… It’s bound to leave a….” Not a mark. Stupid to say that, when they both knew the guy was still all over slashes and bruises, a criss-crossing of quivering cuts ready to break out bleeding again from one careless pressure. “It’s okay to be upset about what she did to you.”

“We did it to each other.” The terse note in his voice was as brittle as broken glass. There was a wealth of self-loathing behind it that stabbed through Riley again. Even when he had discovered most of his certainties were based on lies, that the woman he respected and admired was the creator of a monster and perhaps a monster herself, and that the woman who fought and killed demons had also loved one once, he had still known that he was on the side of right, and he hadn’t automatically assumed that he deserved to be suffering like this.

“You didn’t do anything to her except help save her life at the risk of your own.” He didn’t know why he needed to get through to this guy so badly, but it felt important; something to do with needing to find his own clarity by holding the flashlight for this guy as he stumbled towards his own understanding.

Wesley looked up at him and his eyes were haunted. “I made her a torturer.” He turned his head away quickly, and Riley felt breathless with pity for him. He wondered how a guy had to be raised when he blamed himself for becoming a victim.

“Using that logic, I made her a rapist, but I’m not blaming myself for that. I’m definitely good with blaming her.” He wanted to put his hands on Wesley’s shoulders and force him to look at him, but Faith had made him an untouchable; it was impossible to pat him on the shoulder for reassurance because his shoulders had been mercilessly scored with glass, and completely out of the question to enfold him in a comforting hug because his ribs were purple with the imprint of Faith’s boots. 

“I think Xander already did that to her, back in Sunnydale.” 

The quiet sentence, those eyes still not meeting his, made him flinch inside at how much damage this girl had inflicted. Yet he couldn’t deny that, keeping pace with his anger on behalf of her victims, was pity for the girl he had held in his arms and who had been so oddly surprised by a tender kiss, who had seemed moved almost beyond bearing to be told that she was loved. 

“Nah, it was consensual the first time – if a little lacking in after-act-snuggling – and the second time, Angel stopped her from getting to third base.”

Even at his surprise and momentary embarrassment at realizing Xander and Cordelia had now joined them, it jolted through Riley, another barb of jealousy, because Angel seemed to have the knack of turning up when he was most needed, while Riley had no supernatural senses to tell him when the people he cared about were in need of a dark avenger swinging through their window. When he glanced up at Xander, the boy was trying so hard not to make his sympathy for Wesley evident, better than Riley at realizing the guy needed to be treated like the grown up he clearly was. 

“Yeah, one-on-one alone time with Faith. Never a dull moment, eh?” That catch in Cordelia’s voice as she tried to sound upbeat and careless made Riley get up and walk across the room. He was so angry with Angel right now. How could he have left them like this?

Xander said quietly: “Wes, it’s been a long night. I know you’re a Watcher and all, and you probably can’t help yourself around those musty old books, but don’t you think you ought to think about getting some rest?”

Cordelia gave another bright little laugh, that also carried that brittle note: “Have you _seen_ his place? Walk through the door with an open cut and you’ll have gangrene before you reach the kitchen. It makes Xander’s basement look like the Ritz.”

“It’s temporary.” Wesley looked like a man who could hardly be suffering more if his testicles were in a vice, but even knowing they were just adding to his feeling of humiliation and self-loathing, couldn’t stop Riley from pressing on with all the wrong questions.

“Is that where you stayed after…?” _After your employer comforted your torturer and left you to take care of yourself?_

“I told Angel to drop me there. I didn’t want to disturb Cordelia any further. Angel had called her to let her know I was safe, and I knew she had a concussion….” Wesley broke off in annoyance. “None of this is any of your business.”

Firmly, Riley said: “You two need to come back to Sunnydale with us.” 

Xander nodded emphatically. “Seconded.”

Cordelia and Wesley gazed at them in disbelief. “No,” Wesley said. “Absolutely not.”

Cordelia folded her arms. “Not for all the Versace in Milan.”

“You can’t stay here.” Riley folded his own arms with equal emphasis. “Wesley doesn’t even have a sanitary place to stay.”

“He’s staying with me,” Cordelia retorted. 

Xander shook his head. “You two can’t seriously intend to go on working for Angel after what he did to you?”

“He saved me.” 

The absolute conviction in those quiet words from Wesley was a shock, and Riley saw Xander give a little start. 

Wesley gazed up at them as if he had seen the light and carried its glow within him now. He reminded Riley uncomfortably of some priest who had come through a crisis of faith with his belief in God reaffirmed by the experience, and who would never now doubt again. “That’s what happened. He sent Cordelia and I away because he correctly surmised that Faith was a danger to us, and then he found both of us, and he saved me, at the risk of his own life. If either of you have forgotten this, a Slayer is stronger than a vampire and Faith had accepted a contract on Angel’s life. But he came after me anyway.”

Xander gritted his teeth. “You know, Wes, you really need to start asking more of the people in your life than that they won’t walk away and leave you to die at the hands of a sadistic psychopath.”

“Why?” Wesley reached for another book, wiping his sleeve over its leather binding, despite the way he was clearly too stiff to move without considerable pain. “It’s more than I’ve known before.”

Xander looked stung. “You think if this had happened in Sunnydale that no one would have looked for you?”

“Honestly?” Wesley glanced up at him without condemnation. “I imagine Faith could have kept me tied to a chair for a week before any of you except for Cordelia wondered what had become of me. Probably no more than I deserved, but not very comforting all the same. Angel found me within hours.”

“Christ, Wesley, what kind of monsters do you think we are? Giles saved your life when you were captured by Balthazar. Buffy would have looked for you, and she would have found you and….”

“And what? Blamed me for traumatizing Faith with my interference and driving her to the point where the girl had no choice but to torture me for kicks?”

“Why would she have needed to?” Xander countered quietly. “You seem to be pretty good at doing that yourself.”

Wesley’s eyes flashed in annoyance. “I don’t think I deserved what Faith did to me.”

“Don’t you?” Xander held his gaze and Riley saw again a glimpse of the man this boy was on the cusp of becoming. He had never realized that Buffy’s unemployed high school friend had all this steely strength under the surface. “What, none of it? Or are you measuring it out there? Maybe you deserved the beating, but not the slicing? Or maybe you deserved the slicing, but not the home-made flame thrower in the face? I’d like to see some conviction there that none of this was your fault.”

“Some of it was my fault.” Wesley closed his eyes, a headache clearly throbbing painfully. “I didn’t deserve what she did to me, but I did contribute to her becoming someone who was capable of doing that. I just hadn’t realized until I was tied to that chair that Faith considered me one of the people who had betrayed her. Until that moment, I hadn’t thought I mattered enough to Faith to be worth hating.”

Riley decided that he was making an executive decision here. These two were too vulnerable to leave here, where anyone with a grudge against Angel could just walk in and grab them. Even leaving aside the fact the guy was a vampire with a curse that could make him turn evil in the blink of an orgasm, and was probably just using these two to help him brood his way towards some kind of redemption for all the serial killing he’d done in the past, he had a lot of enemies. That police detective already seemed to be working her way up to a grudge, and there couldn’t be any shortage of demons out there who had it in for the one of their own who had joined the white hats. And now it turned out there was the Watchers’ Council and an evil law firm with who both had it in for him as well. These two were just too fragile, physically and emotionally, to be left to the mercy of this life. At least if they were in Sunnydale, they would have a support system around them, and a Slayer to give them her protection. Hellmouth or no Hellmouth, it had to be safer than here. He glanced across at Xander to see if he was in agreement, and then at his nod, stepped forward decisively.

As if she knew his thoughts, Cordelia moved between him and Wesley and reached out to stroke the Englishman’s hair back from his contusion-mottled forehead. She looked tired and close to tearful but very determined. “Wes? Will you take me home?”

“Of course.” His expression was so gentle when he spoke to her. He even dredged up a reassuring smile that temporarily lit up his bruised, bony face. 

She smiled back, and even though a few minutes ago they had seemed lost without Angel, now it was as if these two had all they needed just with each other. Riley felt as if a forcefield had just been erected around them, keeping them in and the rest of the world out. “Will you stay over with me?” she added.

“Of course,” Wesley repeated, giving her another smile. A moment before, Wesley had been sitting there, a breath away from shattering; Riley had been wondering how to get the pieces of him into Xander’s car without dropping any on the sidewalk when they rescued him, but now as Wesley stood up, it was as the older brother of an adopted sister who needed his comfort and protection. “I’ll take you now. How’s your head?”

“It’s been better.” She pulled his arm around her shoulders as if he were an overcoat, and he pressed a kiss to the side of her head.

“Do you have Tylenol at home?” He shook the bottle of painkillers at her in enquiry. “Or shall we pick up something stronger on the way home? I think we need to keep these in the office if at all possible.” 

As Riley watched, wrong-footed, Cordelia escorted Wesley to the doorway and then gave them a slightly triumphant look over her shoulder. “We need to lock up now.”

Exchanging a glance with Xander, Riley had it confirmed that they had been outmaneuvered. “But…” Xander began.

“Oh yes.” Wesley paused in the doorway. “Thank you very much for your help. It’s very much appreciated. I’m sorry if we were a little…well, I’m sure you understand. But we are grateful for your assistance.”

As Xander and Riley both kept standing and staring, feeling their ‘let’s kidnap them for their own good and take them to Sunnydale for de-programming’ plan trickling through their fingers like water through a dam, Cordelia said: “And we need to lock up now, so….” Her sweep of the arm invited them to leave ahead of them, and Riley found himself automatically obeying.

Realizing that he was also exhausted, he tried to rally: “Look, I really think you should consider….”

Cordelia tried out her best attentive but confused expression while Wesley’s actually looked genuine. “We’re fine,” she assured them breezily. “Just a little in need of a hot shower and a warm bed and clothes that – no offence – don’t smell of Xander sweat.”

“Oh yes, thank you for the loan of clothing.” Wesley held up a hand. “If you could just hang on a moment. Cordelia…?”

As Riley watched in bemusement, the two of them climbed into the elevator and shut the doors, the old machinery cranking them down into what was presumably the vampire’s Den of Dark Pain. “But…” he tried again. The only answer was the clank of the gate being slid back and the distant sound of Wesley and Cordelia holding a conversation that did not in any way include them. He turned to Xander who shrugged helplessly.

Demoralized, exhausted people, he could possibly get into Xander’s car, but these two seemed to have gotten their second wind. Xander said: “I’m good with clubbing Wesley unconscious and stashing him in the trunk, but you’re going to have to tie up Cordelia.”

Thinking of those cuts on Wesley’s wrists, Riley shuddered. He kept seeing that skinny guy tied to a chair, struggling as the glass sliced into him, until he was cutting his own wrists on the blood-stained ropes. Then he thought about what Xander was asking and blanched. He held up his hands in defeat. “Not even if the world’s widows and orphans depended on it.”

Xander rolled his eyes. “Okay – she’s scary, but you’re a soldier – you’re meant to be good at dealing with scary things.”

“Demons – yes, women – no. Especially not that woman.” Riley gave Xander another look over. “Was is it with your dating choices anyway? Cordelia, Faith, and – did Anya really used to be a demon?”

“Of a kind.”

“What kind?”

Xander’s face did a lot of things that suggested it wanted nothing to do with the next few words that came out of his mouth: “The kind that punishes unfaithful men by pulling out their entrails, or occasionally removing all their skin while they’re still trying to use it. But she’s human now. Completely human and therefore in no way a legitimate target for any demon-killing military types.”

“Oh, the warm and cuddly kind of ex-demon then.” Riley shook his head. “And my aunt tells me _I_ have a death wish just because I joined up.”

“I don’t have a death wish, and Cordelia hasn’t killed anyone. Well, not anyone human anyway.”

“Great, you’re batting one for three out of your girlfriends so far then.”

“Faith was never my ‘girlfriend’, just the person who…you know.”

“Used you for sex and then threw you out?”

Xander’s expression was more annoyed than wounded. “Okay – for two people having all these communication problems, you and Buffy sure do seem to do a lot of talking about the rest of us.”

Realizing the young man had a point, Riley gave him an apologetic grimace. “Sorry. She was just filling me in on Faith’s greatest hits.”

Xander shook his head. “I don’t really qualify to be on that list. Like Wesley, I didn’t even make it onto Faith’s official rap sheet. After all, what’s a little attempted rape and murder amongst friends?”

Again, he was seeing those cuts, not just the ones she had sliced with such shallow precision across Wesley’s skin, turning him into the canvas for her to express all her frustrations with the Watcher’s Council, the world, and her own self-hatred, but the ones that had bitten into his wrists. A man had to be struggling pretty hard to do that to himself and not even notice. Feeling sick, he said: “Do you think she…? With Wesley…? He couldn’t exactly get away.”

Xander’s appalled expression mirrored his feelings exactly. “I’ve no idea, but I can tell you that Wesley would probably rather have a home appendectomy than tell us about it – and you now owe me for a bottle of brain bleach.”

“We’ll share one on the way home,” Riley assured him.

The clank of the elevator reminded them that the two people they had been hoping to rescue were coming back up. This time when the metal gate was pushed back, it revealed a smiling Cordelia, now wearing a black t-shirt that was several sizes too big for her, and Wesley wearing a black sweater over a black t-shirt, both of which were several sizes too big for _him_. Riley felt that their determination to replace the clothes he and Xander had supplied, with clothes from Angel’s wardrobe was not exactly a random decision. 

“Thank you for the loan.” Wesley handed over his jacket. “Not really my style, but much appreciated.”

“Yes, thank you.” When Cordelia gave Xander back his coat, there was a hint of that softness in her expression that she had displayed in the warehouse. Quite gently, she said: “You don’t need to worry about us. We’re really fine.”

Xander gazed back at her, expression defeated. “Wish I could believe that, Cord.”

Cordelia gave a little shrug. “Hey, at least we’re not living on a Hellmouth.”

“Take care, Cordy.” Xander put his arms around her and hugged her gently, pressing a kiss into her hair. After a moment’s hesitation, she wrapped her arms around him too, and for a moment they clung to one another, and then they were reluctantly separating, two pairs of brown eyes both bright with unshed tears. 

Wesley watched their display of emotion in some concern and then hastily proffered a hand to Riley, presumably before the man attempted to embrace him. They shook hands briskly. “Thanks again for your help. And do give me regards to Buffy and…everyone else in Sunnydale.”

“You’re welcome and I will.” When Riley released his hand he wished he didn’t feel so much like a climber letting go of another mountaineer’s lifeline.

Wesley seemed to read that in his eyes. An expression of surprise washed over his face and he said, less briskly, and with more kindness: “You really don’t need to worry about us. Angel will be back tonight or tomorrow at the latest.”

With a huge effort of will, Riley bit down the ‘Well, that makes me feel _so_ much better’ that was screaming to be let out and saw Xander this time heroically do the same. He shook Cordelia’s hand while Xander solemnly did the same with Wesley. “Take care, Wes.”

The Englishman looked quite touched at the warmth in Xander’s voice. “You too. Remember, we’re here if you’re ever in need of our assistance.”

“‘In case of apocalypse, call 555 Dark Avenger?’”

Wesley didn’t so much as blink. “Yes, we’re still ironing out the bat signal apparatus.”

Then, Riley and Xander were ushered out of the office quite politely and with smiles of what seemed to be genuine warmth, and accompanied to the parking lot. Riley even felt a brief spasm of envy when he saw Wesley pulling on that crash helmet and swinging his leg over that really quite impressive motorbike. Next to it, Xander’s car looked even more battered than it had when he had first seen it; a situation not helped by the way it seemed to be slumped down on its suspension. Belatedly, Riley remembered that it was actually Xander’s father’s car and that, according to Buffy, Xander’s father was not the most pleasant or patient of men. Cordelia climbed onto the back of the motorbike and wrapped her arms around Wesley’s waist. “Bye then,” she said quite cheerfully.

“Yes, thanks again. Safe journey back to Sunnydale.” Wesley started the engine, and then roared out of the car park with what Riley had to admit was some panache. 

Xander sniffed. “Of course, anyone can look cool on a motorbike.”

Riley nodded, still watching Wesley pulling out into the neon lit street. “Totally.”

As they walked back to the car, Xander said conversationally: “Well, we came, we saw, we kind of conquered, and at the end of it all, I want to punch Angel on the nose even more than when we left Sunnydale. I don’t know if that’s progress or not.”

“If he’s still in Sunnydale, how about you hold him, I’ll stake him.” Riley slid into the passenger seat and felt the car bounce creakily underneath him. He was sure he was now sitting three inches nearer the ground that he had been before. “Sorry about your father’s car.”

“Hey, at least it gives the guy an actual bona fide reason to hate and despise me. You have to find the silver lining.” And then Xander was wearily turning the key in the ignition and they were sputtering out of the parking lot with a lot more exhaust fumes and a lot less of the style that a high-powered motorbike bestowed upon the driver.

***

They drove home in darkness, at first welcome, after all the sight-smearing neon of the overcrowded never-sleeping city, and then more and more tiring. They took it in turns to drive, changing over at a rest-stop on the way where they poured more sugar and caffeine into their systems. He and Xander didn’t talk much. There wasn’t a lot to say. The ‘what if’s were too near and too present to be in need of discussion. It had been an illogical impulse to go to LA, when perhaps all the time the person they had really needed to talk to was, not Angel but Buffy, and yet if they hadn’t done it, Riley had no doubt that Cordelia and Wesley would have been killed. Angel would have gone home to an empty office and perhaps never even known what had become of them. Or perhaps they would have left him a note. Perhaps he would have come home to a piece of paper telling him when and where the babies were going to be sacrificed and he would have arrived there in time to collect their corpses. For the rest of his undead existence he would have known that if he had only driven a little faster, left a little sooner, they might have lived, but then, he was probably used to the guilt by now, would two more deaths on his conscience really sting that much among so many?

“Riley?”

He realized he was gripping the steering wheel so hard that there was a danger of him losing all feeling in his fingers. “Just thinking about how dead those two nearly were.”

“I know.” Xander shook his head. “I’m going to be thinking about that for a while.”

They kept thinking about it all the rest of the way home.

 

It was Xander’s suggestion that they went to Giles’s place. “The Initiative may know you’re cosy with Buffy, but I doubt Giles is on their radar. Unless you’re really jonesing to get back to that crispy fried Mayor meat…?”

As they pulled up outside Giles’ place they saw the car – a long, black, stylish convertible. Xander frowned. “Dark, conflicted, pretentious. Either there’s a rockstar in the neighborhood or Angel is gracing us with his presence.”

Riley was out of the car so fast, he nearly broke his ankle on a flowerpot. He made to knock on the door, and then stepped back into the shadows and looked through the window. It felt odd to be the one in the darkness, the one who had to lurk and hide, the fugitive who dwelt in shadows. Riley could see Buffy, looking beautiful and brittle and like someone about to snap, and there was that impossibly handsome stranger, wearing those layers of black. He looked a little pale in the lamplight, but apart from that he looked human, except he really did have the razzle dazzle. Maybe it was the soul giving him that movie star glamor, but Riley suspected it was the demon within him that provided that. Willow was sitting on the couch, clearly wishing she was somewhere else, while Giles was handing out cups of tea with an expression on his face that suggested he too would have given a lot to be almost anywhere but here.

“Oh yes.” Xander stood next to him and also gazed into the window. “I can feel the angst from here. How I miss the fun days of constant emotional torment with that occasional segue to bloodbathy goodness.”

Riley could see a gash on Buffy’s forehead and a bruise blossoming out from it. She looked exhausted; her hair falling in soft waves of gold against a white polo neck sweater so thickly-knitted that it looked like chainmail. He wondered if that was how she felt right now – in need of armour. She and Angel looked so different, Buffy dressed in white and with hair of gold, and the vampire swathed in those layers of black, dark hair spiking in a way that asked the universal question – how did anyone get his hair to do that without access to a reflection? And yet they looked so damned good together, too.

“Buffy told me a lot about this guy, but I don’t remember her mentioning that he looked like…that.”

Xander wrinkled his nose. “Yeah, people talk about the face and the bone structure and the muscles and the lithe, panther-like grace, but me – I don’t see it.”

“A blind man could see it.” Riley realized that Angel looking like that was in no way lessening his desire to punch him on the nose. 

“Hey, you’re not so bad yourself.” Xander held out expressive hands. “You’ve got the whole tall, strong, yet boyishly handsome thing going for you, not to mention the mysterious military demon killer by night and affable TA by day double life for extra cool points, and that time with the evil plants when Anya and I interrupted – I couldn’t help noticing that you look great naked.”

The truly sad part about this conversation was that it was making him feel better. “Thanks.”

“I didn’t mean that in a gay way.”

Riley nodded. “Understood.”

“Although, the list of things I would do to get my hands on one of those laser blaster things is quite long.”

“Not something I needed to know.” 

“And we’re done with the male bonding.”

Riley took another look, mentally comparing the stylish, black-clad vampire, not with himself, but with those two pale, exhausted, bruised human beings they had left behind in LA. The anger flared up again, a nice bright constant, because the guy had no business looking like that when, if it hadn’t been for him and Xander, those two would be dead. He exchanged another glance with Xander and read the same feelings in his brown eyes. Even as he headed for the door behind him, it occurred to him that if he and Buffy could communicate this effortlessly, half of his insecurities about their relationship would disappear overnight.

Xander went in first. Willow looked up with a smile of welcome and relief that reinforcements had arrived – which quickly turned to trepidation when she caught sight of Riley behind Xander, gaze flickering between Buffy’s past and current boyfriend. Riley just wished he knew for sure which of them was which. Buffy caught sight of Xander and started glaring, evidently having heard why they had gone to LA, and deeply resenting the interference. Anya had presumably let it slip. There was a dark stain on the edge of Riley’s vision in the shape of an Angel. Everything else in the room was bright, and light-edged and full of warmth, and then there was the black shadow in the corner that was the vampire with a soul.

Angel was halfway through a sentence: “…and then I got jumped by these GI Joe wannabes. I’m telling you, downtown Sunnydale has really gone downhill since I left.” 

“They’re actually good guys.” Xander looked Angel up and down. “So, I hope you didn’t kill any of them.”

“I don’t kill humans, even when they’re trying to kill me.” Angel gave Xander a look that wasn’t exactly overflowing with warm fuzzies. “Anya said you were looking for me?”

“Which I don’t appreciate.” Buffy jumped into the fray without even noticing that Riley had walked into the room behind Xander – that probably wasn’t a good sign. “You have no right to start interfering in my private life and to go haring off like knights on white horses to fight my battles for me.”

“This has nothing to do with you,” Xander told her. As she looked, unsurprisingly shocked, at what must seem like a bare-faced lie to her, Xander amended: “Well, maybe in the beginning it did, but it’s turned into something else.”

“How can you say that it isn’t about me?” she demanded. “This was nothing to do with you and….”

“It’s not about you.” There was a snap in Xander’s voice that Riley had never heard before and he wasn’t surprised when Buffy took a step back, looking as if the boy had slapped her. Xander turned to where that dark shadow was just getting to his feet. “It’s about him.”

Angel had a ‘here we go again’ look on his face that was mostly dismissive, and that personally made Riley want to break his nose. It seemed to have pretty much the same effect on Xander, who got into the guy’s face with commendable courage.

“How could you just leave them there?” Xander spat furiously.

That seemed to shock everyone and did at least take the wind out of the vampire’s sails. “What?”

Buffy also looked bewildered. “Who are we talking about here?”

Xander kept glaring at Angel. “You left Cordy and Wesley in LA by themselves.”

Angel blinked in confusion. “This is about…? Faith was in prison. They weren’t in any danger. Why do you even care?”

“Because they’re people I know and you left them alone and scared.”

“I told them to stay in Cordy’s apartment if they wanted to. Come back to work in a couple of days.”

The guy was looking way too unruffled and Riley stepped forward, fists clenched. “The apartment where Faith was waiting for them last time they went there? The one where she concussed Cordelia? Kidnapped Wesley? I’m sure that made them feel really safe.”

Xander poked Angel in the chest with his finger. “Don’t you get it, Mr Super Strength? _You’re_ their safe place, and you took that to Sunnydale and left them unprotected. After what they’d just been through, don’t you think that was the act of a – oh, what’s the word I’m looking for? – total bastard?”

“That’s actually two words,” Buffy said, eyes wide with surprise. “And I left them, too.”

“Yeah, because Angel was there to take care of them. He left them with no one.” Xander turned away in disgust, throwing words at the vampire like rocks: “What is it with you anyway? Do you have some kind of spell you put on people that means even if you treat them like crap, they’re just bound to think you can walk on water anyway? All the excuses I’ve had to listen to about you over the years, I wonder I’m still even surprised when they just keep coming. But at least Buffy was in love with you. I guess Wes and Cordy are just desperate.”

“We tried to get them to come with us.” Riley felt the full force of their defeat as he addressed Buffy, Willow, and Giles equally. They had given up too easily, let themselves be faced down by a teenage girl and the walking wounded that was Wesley. “But they wouldn’t. Maybe we should give it a week and then try again…” He sank wearily onto the couch. 

That seemed to get to the vampire like nothing else; he spun around to glare at Riley, voice dangerous: “They’re my people, and they don’t want or need to come back to Sunnydale to be treated like crap by the rest of you.”

“Hey, why would they, when you can treat them like crap in LA without them needing to pack a suitcase first?” Xander sat down next to Riley, weariness washing over his face.

 

In the moment of laden silence, Giles felt as if everyone had just come into focus for him. Riley and Xander both looked exhausted, the young soldier for the first time seeming to be more than Buffy’s latest romantic appendage, but someone with opinions and problems of his own. Giles had been thinking of him as the rebound boyfriend, the uncomplicated human being to help Buffy get over the emotional upheaval of Angel, but there was apparently more to him than met the eye, not just a young man who did as he was told and looked good in a uniforn. He had risked everything to try to save Oz, and lost his job in the process. When Giles had been fired as Buffy’s Watcher, he had at least put everything on the line for someone he knew and loved like a daughter. Oz was someone with whom Riley had barely exchanged a few sentences, yet he had done it anyway, just because it was the right thing to do. That suggested a strength and depth of character that made Giles wonder if Buffy had chosen better than perhaps even she knew when she picked this young man.

Personally, he had not exactly been thrilled to see Angel again, the vampire leaving his car outside his house while he went off to bring more joy and happiness to Buffy’s crowded life, and frankly wished that Buffy had not insisted on Angel coming in so that he could ‘catch up’ with Willow and Giles. Given the way Willow had been fidgeting, she had found the situation uncomfortable as well. No doubt, leaving her had been the right decision, but it had certainly not been an easy one for Buffy, and it had been taken unilaterally by Angel alone. Giles was not in any way excusing Xander and Riley’s decision to drive to LA to confront the vampire, but he could certainly understand where their impulse had come from. But this latest conversation had taken him by surprise. 

He stepped forward, holding up a hand for a pause in which everyone could collect themselves. “I’m not sure I really understand exactly what the problem is here. Are Cordelia and Wesley hurt?”

“Faith knocked out Cordelia and tortured Wesley.” Xander looked up at Buffy. “Angel didn’t tell you?”

Buffy flinched at that ‘tortured’, as did Giles, at least internally. She said: “No. But Wesley was all over bruises. I should have asked…. We were just a little busy trying to stop the Council from carrying out their little assassination plan. There wasn’t much time for chit-chat. I didn’t realize she’d….”

“Tied him to a chair and cut him open with broken glass? Making it a little tough for him to go up against the Netraxan demons who featured in Cordelia’s brain-splittingly painful vision.”

Finally, Angel lost his poise and looked more upset than angry. “Cordy had a vision? I told her to call me if she did. I told them absolutely not to…”

“Cordelia had a vision of a horde of evil ritual sacrificing demons with half a dozen screaming babies in their claws, and an hour to go until supper time. What did you expect them to do? Shrug and let the little people die? Of course, they went after the demons. If we hadn’t been there….”

Giles noticed that Xander was trembling, suggesting this was more than just anger, but shock too, the ‘what if’ still haunting him. Netraxan demons. He seriously doubted that a Cordelia and Wesley in perfect health could go up against those and live. Feeling a little faint at the thought of the carnage that could have ensued if Riley and Xander had not followed their illogical impulse to go to LA, he rested a hand on the younger man’s shoulder as Xander wrestled to get that tremor out of his voice. 

Angel had already snatched up the phone. As he stabbed at the numbers his voice was also ragged with anxiety: “Are they okay? What happened?” He had evidently misdialled, the sing-song voice of the automatic operator telling him that number was not recognized. “What _happened_?”

Xander just kept glowering; it was Riley who said: “They’re okay. A few more bruises.”

“They would have been dead without us,” Xander said brutally. “And it was only chance that we were there. If you’re going to start having ‘people’, instead of just brooding by your lonesome, you need to take better care of them or at least tell them that you don’t really give a crap, so at least they know where they stand.”

“You have no idea what they mean to me!” Angel spat so savagely, that Buffy stepped in front of Xander and held up her hand.

“Let’s all take a deep breath and not say anything we might regret.” She darted a look at Giles suggesting he could dive in any time. 

“Yes, let’s just take a moment to…” Giles trailed off, thinking ‘Take a moment to…what? Undo the last four years of our lives so that we’re not at this point right now…?’ He was still thinking about Wesley and Cordelia running into a place where there were Netraxan demons intent on their annual ritual sacrifice. The death for such an intrusion was a particularly grisly one, and Wesley would know that, so what on earth had the idiot been thinking, taking himself and Cordelia into that situation? Then he thought about just standing aside and letting babies die when there was a chance – however slight – that one’s intervention might be enough to save them, and realized that was what the idiot had been thinking – that he didn’t have the moral option to sit this one out. 

Angel dialled again, although his hand was visibly shaking as he stabbed at the buttons. Cordelia’s voice sounded so clearly down the line that it was obvious Angel had inadvertently hit speaker phone: “Xander Harris, if that’s you, you’re a dead man the next time we meet.”

“It’s me, Cordy.” Angel closed his eyes in relief and Giles realized that the girl must indeed mean a great deal to him. “Are you okay?”

“Yes. Are you?” There was a tentative note in her voice that Giles had only heard a few times before. He felt abruptly like an intruder, knowing the girl would not want them to be hearing her sounding like this. Angel seemed to have the same idea. He stabbed ineffectually at the keypad, trying to switch off the speaker phone but only succeeding in cranking up the volume.

“I’m fine. Is Wesley with you?”

“Yeah, he’s researching something icky on the couch. Not that I have anything icky on my couch, he’s just researching… Anyway…you want to talk to him?” She seemed to be walking as she talked. “Is Buffy okay?” There was that tentative concerned note in her voice again.

“She’s fine.”

“Wes, it’s Angel, and…ewww! Why don’t you research some nice demons for a change? Pretty ones with nice fashion sense.” 

Wesley’s reply was inaudible but then he came on the phone, saying: “Angel, is everything okay?”

“Are you all right?” Angel asked abruptly.

“Yes. Why?” The tremor in Wesley’s voice was one he was apparently trying manfully to suppress. “Did Faith…? Is she still in prison?”

“Yes. God, yes. I just…wanted to know you were both okay.”

“We’re fine.” A momentary hesitation before Wesley added: “If you need more time to ensure that Buffy is entirely recovered, then we’d understand.” He sounded so much like someone trying to be brave despite being afraid there was a monster in his closet, that Giles felt an entirely unexpected twinge of sympathy for him. Wesley seemed to be forcing himself to add: “That must have been a very unpleasant experience she went through.”

They heard Cordelia say darkly: “Yeah, because what you went through was just a day at the funfair.”

“Cordelia, please…” Wesley murmured in what he clearly hoped was _sotto voce_ , but which the speaker phone still transmitted through the whole room. “How would you like to have someone steal your body and run off with it?”

“Not much. But it’s still my first choice on my ‘fun nights out’ list if the other option is someone taking my body while I’m still using it, tying it to a chair, and slicing it up with broken glass,.”

“Cordy, don’t…” Wesley sounded as if any sympathy was just another unbearable wound to him.

“I’m coming home,” Angel said. “I’m leaving in a few minutes. Don’t go anywhere. Just stay where you are.”

“Is something wrong?” Wesley asked in obvious confusion.

Angel was gripping the phone so hard, Giles was worried he was going to break it. “I just can’t lose anyone else.”

Buffy looked stricken, evidently realizing that she was one of the things the vampire had lost; while Willow looked nothing but sorry for him. Even Giles felt a twinge of pity. 

“We’re not going anywhere.” Wesley sounded different from the way Giles remembered, tone sympathetic, accent softened. “We’ll be here when you get back.” He heard Wesley murmur something to Cordelia which was almost inaudible except for the word ‘Doyle’.

“Promise me,” Angel said.

There was a pause before Wesley said softly: “I promise.”

Angel’s hand was still shaking a little as he put down the phone, even though Giles was almost certain that adrenalin and endorphins did not work the same way on vampires that they did on human beings. Perhaps it was a demon twitch that had set off those tremors; that darkness in him unleashed by the frustration of Netraxans having attacked his ‘people’ while he was not there to protect them, or else something darker and deeper set off by the prospect of Riley and Xander having tried to lure Cordelia and Wesley away from his protection. He had already had to face the reality that Buffy was with another man now; perhaps this was too much on top of that realization.

“They’re always going to forgive you, aren’t they?” Xander was slumped back in the couch, looking more resigned than angry now. “Just like Buffy, just like Willow. I thought better of Cordelia, I really did. She used to know how to hold onto a grudge.”

Giles thought of how small Sunnydale was by comparison with LA. Dangerous, certainly, but that had been a constant for everyone who lived here, the deaths acknowledged even when people were in denial about their cause. Cordelia had been one of the richest and prettiest and most confident young women in this small town, but in LA she must have felt diminished. So many people, all chasing the same things that she was, and no one who knew her name, or her past, or thought her of importance. No one except Angel. And Wesley had probably felt small enough in Sunnydale. In LA, he must have felt invisible. Perhaps neither one of them felt confident enough to hold a grudge in LA, not against one of the very few people who knew them and cared whether or not they lived or died. Perhaps they clung to Angel, the way Buffy and Willow in the past had sometimes clung to Giles. The person whose name they called when danger threatened.

“You don’t know anything about our lives there,” Angel told Xander.

“If anyone did to Willow what Faith did to Wesley, I would hunt them down and kill them. And if you really gave a crap about him, the last thing you would have done is help her after what she did to him.”

“She did some terrible things to Buffy as well. Do you really think I don’t give a crap about her either? Do you think that Buffy didn’t care about what Faith did to her mother, to you, to me? Faith tortured Wesley to make me kill her, because she hated herself and she wanted to die. Wesley is one of the people who helped to save her, because she was capable of redemption. He understands why we do what we do. Better than you do.”

Riley glanced up and met Angel’s gaze and Giles watched that current of dislike pass between them. If they had met in less constrained circumstances they would have been punching each other in the head by now. Quietly, Riley said: “You’re going to get them killed.”

Angel’s tone was murderous as he took a step towards Riley: “Just stay away from them.” 

Willow whispered to Giles: “There’s a lot of transference going on here.”

Giles whispered back: “To borrow an objectionable Americanism ‘you think?’”

“Can everyone please calm down?” Buffy looked as frayed around the edges as everyone else. 

“Don’t worry, I’m leaving.” Angel strode towards the door, coat billowing behind him, but the glare he fixed on Riley and Xander was chilling. His face looked human, but the expression in his eyes was all vampire. “I mean it – stay away from them.”

Riley rose to his feet and glared right back and Giles didn’t know whether to applaud his courage as he eyeballed Angel, or deplore his stupidity. With his face a few inches from the vampire’s he said, “If it wasn’t for us, they’d be dead. You’re the one who should stay away from them.”

That was almost a growl from Angel. “You don’t know anything about who they are or what our lives are like in LA. You got Buffy – good for you and if you’re her choice there’s not a lot I can do about it except seriously question her taste – but back the hell away from Cordy and Wes.” His glower turned onto Xander. “And that goes for you too.”

Angel turned on his heel, and slammed out with all the grace and power of something that habitually snapped the neck of its prey. Watching him go, Giles wondered what it was exactly they had just witnessed. Angel had given Buffy up unwillingly, but seemed to have exchanged being the lover of the girl that Giles had no doubt he still loved, to be the patriarch of a family of adopted misfits. Perhaps it was good for Angel’s mental health to have other people to hold him to humanity and prevent him from going off the rails – and good for society as well – but Giles wondered how good it could be for those members of what seemed to be his new family. His first two attempts at being a family member had not exactly gone swimmingly, after all.

“Well, that was…awkward,” he murmured.

Buffy got up and went after the vampire, while Riley watched her go, an expression of resignation and pain on his face that suggested he thought she would not be coming back.

“We should get them out of there,” Xander insisted to no one in particular.

“I don’t really see that working,” Willow offered tentatively. “What with them being free agents and over eighteen and everything.”

“Were you proposing to kidnap them?” Giles suggested.

“Yeah, but Riley wimped out on tying up Cordelia.”

It took him a moment to realize that Xander wasn’t joking. “Xander, Cordelia is a grown woman now, and entitled to make her own mistakes. Even those that include choosing to work for a vampire.” Seeing the boy open his mouth, he added quickly: “And that goes twice for Wesley. They’re not your responsibility and you can’t force them to leave Angel against their will.”

“If they’d been sucked in by some evil demonic cult we’d interfere, right?”

Giles sighed. “Angel is not an evil demonic cult.”

Riley said: “But how do we know he’s not using some kind of vampire mind control on them?”

Giles felt his patience begin to wear a little thin. “Riley, I expect stupidity from Xander, I don’t expect it from you.”

“I’m serious. I think he’s worked some kind of…”

“Evil mind whammy,” Xander put in.

Riley nodded. “Yes. And he left them by themselves.”

“There is no law against leaving adults by themselves.” Giles had always thought Riley was such a sensible young man too.

Xander said heatedly: “Well, there should be when they’ve just both had the crap kicked out of them by a rogue Slayer and Cordelia has a hotline to these mystical powers that send her brain-aching visions of nastiness going down that Angel isn’t around to stop.”

Giles wondered how he had been put into the position of being perceived as on Angel’s side. “I’m not defending Angel, I’m just pointing out that you don’t have the right to kidnap Cordelia or Wesley. It’s their choice to work for Angel, and they have a right to have that decision respected.”

“It’s the wrong decision,” Riley said passionately. Buffy still had not come back in, and Giles wondered which decision exactly he was talking about here. 

“And we all have the right to make wrong decisions too, just as we then have to live with the consequences.” 

In the rather laden silence that followed, Willow said brightly: “Why don’t I put the kettle on?”

The door opened to reveal Buffy standing half in the darkness of the outside world and half in the spilled light from Giles’ sitting room. Seeing the pained expression on her face, Giles felt his heart twist for her, wondering if it was always going to be like this for her, this bright, vibrant creature doomed to spend half of her life in darkness. She must feel like Canute on occasion, one Slayer trying to tame a sea of evil with a single stake. No doubt this was why some Watchers advocated bringing up their Slayers like Kendra, away from the distractions of family, friends and – above all – boyfriends. Yet it was hard to imagine Buffy being…Buffy without those very distractions. He had no desire to see her turn into some automaton who did nothing but her duty while her heart and soul chilled from lack of human warmth. It was certainly the case, however, that Kendra, had she lived, would have been spared moments like this, as Buffy gazed at Riley like that. She clearly had something to tell him that was going to hurt both of them.

Riley seemed to understand it too. He just nodded, a little sadly, and then turned to Xander. “We did what we could.”

Xander nodded. “Yeah. And that’s really going to help us both sleep tonight.”

“Maybe they’ll be okay.” Riley offered it, not as if he believed it, but in the hope that Xander might.

Xander looked past Riley to Buffy’s pained face. “Maybe they will.” He could hardly have sounded less convinced.

“Riley, can I talk to you?” Buffy said tentatively. “There’s something I want to tell you.”

Riley nodded and went with her, the two of them stepping out into the shadows. Xander barely waited for the door to close before he said: “Is she out of her _mind_?”

Willow said: “She isn’t leaving Riley for Angel, Xander.”

Xander blinked in confusion. “She’s not?”

“No. She wouldn’t dream of it.”

“So, why is she all guilty-looking and avoidy with the eye contact? She and Angel didn’t…?”

“Of course not. Not everything is about Angel, you know. She’s feeling guilty because there was a fight and Adam killed Forrest. She’s been dreading having to tell Riley that his friend is dead.” Willow put a cup of tea in the boy’s hand. “Now, tell me about Cordelia and Wesley. What exactly did Faith do to them…?”

Curious to hear Xander’s answer himself, Giles still glanced out of the window. Buffy and Riley were walking under a streetlight, her hair a blaze of gold, gazing up at Riley anxiously. As he watched, she reached out and took his hand in hers. No doubt the news she was giving him would hit him hard, but perhaps when he had more time to reflect, after the first intensity of grief had worn off, there would be that moment when he realized that he was the one she had chosen, after all. He turned back in time to hear Xander describing the dingy offices from which Angel was now apparently helping the helpless with the assistance of – of all people – Cordelia Chase and Wesley Wyndam-Pryce….

***

Angel stretched out the hand with which he wasn’t holding the box of doughnuts to knock on the door of Cordelia’s apartment, and then thought of the time. Four in the morning. They would be asleep. He really needed to see them – to see for himself that they were alive and well – but perhaps what they really needed was some rest. He was still hesitating, thinking of his journey home, driving too fast, other headlights a blur in the rain, the wash of the spray from his tires brushing against other lives as he passed them, when there was the sound of a chain being unhooked and a lock pulled back very quietly. When the door swung open to reveal neither Cordelia nor Wesley, and a light that was eased up to the lowest glow by which a vampire could navigate his way across a room, he realized who must have let him in. “Thanks, Dennis,” he whispered. He waited while the ghost locked up behind him, the care he took putting on the chain suggesting that Dennis was still shaken up by Faith’s visit as well.

That reminder wasn’t helping to lessen the feeling of anger and panic because he could have lost them tonight. He hadn’t thought the Powers would send Cordelia a vision when he wasn’t there to be told about it. Weren’t the Powers meant to be omniscient? People died every day in this city and he couldn’t save them all, it was the job of the Powers to select the ones that he could save, and that meant not sending Cordy a vision when he was too far away to help. If Xander and GI Finn hadn’t decided to stick their nose into his business….

He frowned as another thought struck him: perhaps this vision had been for Riley and Xander all the time? The Powers had known they would be coming and had decided that the four of them could deal with a Netraxan sacrifice without him? Well, he didn’t agree. He didn’t think Cordelia or Wesley were in any fit state to be dealing with any killer demons right now, even with the help of two other people, especially when those two other people were only ordinary human beings. The anger flared for a moment, so bright and hot it was like seeing the world through the veil of the flames of hell, because maybe he deserved whatever fate threw at him, but had had never consented to these two being used up and thrown away just to save the lives of strangers.

The anger died as he realized that they had all consented to this. That was what working for him entailed. It was a risk every time they stepped outside of the offices. In fact – thinking of Penn with his arm around Wesley’s neck – it was a risk even inside the offices. He slipped his feet out of his shoes and walking silently across the sitting room, looking for Wesley on the couch, but the couch was empty, and he felt another twinge of fear.

They trusted him these two, perhaps too much. Cordelia had told him she would kill him dead if he ever lost his soul again, but the fact remained that when he had appeared to become Angelus, they had chained him up, not killed him. He had woken to guilt, memory, and their pale, exhausted faces, black circles under their eyes from where they had watched over him all night. All it had taken was a few words of praise and Wesley was ready to forgive him everything. In fact, Wesley had been adamant there was nothing to forgive. Just as Wesley had forgiven him for taking Faith in and taking care of her. Cordelia was made of sterner stuff, but she still trusted him. And he loved that they did. It gave him a different kind of warmth from the one he had felt when he realized Buffy loved him, that he was capable of eliciting love from a spirit as pure and good as hers, but it was a powerful glow all the same, and one he didn’t want to give up. All the same, he wondered if they trusted him enough to want him creeping in to look at them while they slept. So great was his need to see them, however, that he found himself doing it anyway.

The door to Cordelia’s bedroom was ajar and he gently pushed it back further. The drapes weren’t drawn all the way across and moonlight spilled in to show Cordelia and Wesley lying on her bed. They had fallen asleep with their clothes on, like children overtired after an exhausting day. He took another pace, able to scent Xander and Riley on them, just a faint brush of them, but enough to set his nose twitching with dislike. Another pace revealed that they had actually fallen asleep with _his_ clothes on. He moved closer and saw the black folds of his t-shirt wrapped around Cordelia, too big for her, of course. She had kicked off her shoes and slacks and had wrapped herself in the folds of his t-shirt, the length of it falling halfway down her thighs. Wesley was still fully-clothed, although he had taken off his shoes and socks, but he was also wearing Angel’s clothing, swamped by a black sweater whose sleeves came down so far they hid all of his hands except for his fingertips.

Angel smiled in relief. He could hear the deep, even rhythm of their breathing. Another pace and he winced a little because he could detect that metallic salt scent of blood still coming from Wesley, those too-fresh wounds still oozing between their scabs, thinking of him tied to that chair with Faith’s knife to his throat, smelling of fear and pain and – if Angel was honest – food. He hadn’t felt able to tell Wesley how proud he was of the way he had behaved, both in that room when he had helped Angel to get Faith away from him, and afterwards with those council goons. It might have sounded patronising to praise him, and it was the first time they had seemed to be working together as equals. But looking down at the sleeping man now, even the bruises on his face not preventing him from looking so very young, Angel realized that Wesley probably still needed to hear that he had done well.

Wesley stirred and then opened his eyes. There was a second of shock followed by something that was a hundred percent relief. Angel felt the warmth spread straight through him, because even a few weeks ago, Wesley’s instinctive reaction on waking to find Angel gazing down at him would have been fear, and there had been not a flicker of that. “Are you okay?” Wesley whispered.

Angel nodded. “You?”

“Yes.” Wesley sniffed the air. “Is that…?”

Angel realized he was still holding the box of doughnuts. There had been a lot of voices in his head on the drive back from Sunnydale: Buffy telling him that she was with someone else now, Faith asking if it ever got better, the guilt for crimes committed that could never now be undone, Cordelia’s cool dismissal, clearly thinking he was cracked, and, bizarrely, in the midst of it, Wesley saying: _'I understand why you chose not to turn her over to them. I do not, however, understand why the woman who brutally tortured me last night, this morning – gets pastries.'_ It was that last voice that had made him pull into a gas station and buy a family pack of doughnuts.

Feeling a little lame, he held up the carton. “I thought you might be hungry.”

Starving waifs in gutters might possibly have had that carton out of his hand a little faster, but he doubted it. “Dear Lord, I’m starving. Cordelia…” Wesley shook her. “Cordelia, wake up.”

“No, let her rest….” Angel protested ineffectually.

Cordelia woke up with something between a snarl and snort. “What?”

Wesley thrust the box at her. “Angel’s back. He brought food.”

“Oh, thank God.” She grabbed a doughnut and devoured it in three bites, which was one more than Wesley had needed to finish off his. She glanced up at him as she grabbed another doughnut, saying through mouthfuls of pastry: “That you’re back, I mean.”

Angel sat down on the bed, feeling those jangling feelings of rejection and soul-stirring pain at seeing Buffy again begin to recede, like the tide of his old life going out and leaving him on the shore of the new one. “So, did you miss me?”

“Oh, yeah.” She crammed another doughnut into her mouth. “We totally did.”

“Not that we couldn’t cope or anything.” Wesley chewed his way through another doughnut with every appearance of ecstasy. “God, these are good.”

“Xander said you had a run in with some Netraxan demons?”

They exchanged a guilty look, pausing briefly in their chewing, and then Cordelia grabbed another doughnut as she swallowed the last of the one in her mouth. Wesley hastily snatched one himself.

“Well…?” Angel prompted. “Because I distinctly remember telling you not to do any demon-killing while I was away.”

“There were babies,” Wesley protested. “Very small ones.”

“Do you know what those Netraxans would have done to you if those two clowns from Sunnydale hadn’t turned up?”

Cordelia held up a finger. “Talking of which – you owe us for clothes. Ours got melted.”

Angel’s eyes widened as he took in the reason why these two were both wearing his clothing right now. “You let them bleed on you? Are you hurt? Let me look – ”

Cordelia pointedly tugged down her t-shirt. “Hands off, buddy. We’re fine. Well, I’m fine. Wesley’s still the way he was when you went down to make Buffy feel better about yelling at you.” She narrowed her eyes at Wesley as he reached for the final doughnut. “How many have you had?”

“Only four to your five. Which means this last one is mine.” Sighing, Wesley nevertheless tore the doughnut in two pieces and gave Cordelia half. 

Angel felt his heart catch as he looked at them, both of them sleep-crumpled and bruised, and now lightly dusted with sugar. Wesley sucked on his fingers to get the last few grains of sweetness from his skin, clearly still hungry, while Cordelia’s long dark hair tumbled loose around a shoulder left bare from his oversize t-shirt slipping it from it, the edges of her hair catching white sticky threads of frosting as it touched the edge of the doughnut carton. 

“I’m sorry I left you alone,” he said softly. 

They both looked at him in surprise, big brown eyes and big blue eyes showing equal amounts of confusion. “Did Xander and Riley…say something to you?” Wesley asked.

“They said a lot.” He grimaced as honesty asserted itself against his will. “Some of it true.”

Cordelia waved a dismissive hand. “Those two just need a hobby, if you ask me. Or a pet. Until I totally outmaneuvered him, that Riley guy was building up to kidnap Wesley, I could see it in his eyes. I bet he spent his childhood taking in strays who weren’t even strays. It would be all ‘Hey, mom, he followed me all the way home – can I keep him?’ when the whole time the poor mutt would have a collar and a name tag and people out looking for him.”

“Cordelia…” Wesley protested. “I resent being compared to a flea-ridden mongrel. And Xander was equally as willing to kidnap you.”

“I told them to stay away from you,” Angel admitted.

They both gave him another look of confusion and Wesley grimaced. “They were actually rather useful. In all honesty, I’m not sure that we could have managed without them.”

“Oh, without them we’d have been totally dead, for sure.” Cordelia shrugged and licked her finger before rubbing it around the inside of the doughnut carton to catch the last few strands of frosting.

Angel knew that he was in the wrong here, but that didn’t mean he had to admit it. “Yeah, well, I didn’t like that Finn guy. At all.”

“Wow, and with him sleeping with Buffy, too, who would have thought it?” Cordelia observed. 

“Just promise me that next time, whatever vision Cordelia has, you two won’t try killing things by yourselves.”

Cordelia gave him a level look. “You know, it’s a funny thing about my visions, but they don’t actually come with that ‘Don’t try this at home, kids’ warning. If you don’t want us mixing it up with slimy things when you’re not around, then – stick around, because, like it or not, this is our mission too, now.”

“Exactly.” Wesley stopped trying to scrape the last of the frosting from the box that Cordelia had missed and looked at her. “That’s exactly what I meant to say to Riley and Xander.”

“Yeah, me too, but what with the whole defending Angel thing – not to mention trying to stop Riley staging an intervention – ”

“You defended me?” Angel couldn’t help lighting up a little. He was still very shaken up by seeing Buffy and what might have happened to these two – first with Faith, and then with the Netraxan demons – but it was still nice to hear that they were loyal to him.

“Damned straight.” Cordelia looked him in the eyes. “If we want to bitch about you, we can, but we’re a family – no one else gets to criticize you or Wesley in front of me.”

That was definitely a warm fuzzy glow he was feeling now. “If you have eggs I could cook you breakfast,” he offered. “Kind of a ‘Sorry, if I didn’t make it clear how much more you mean to me than Faith, and I’m very glad you didn’t get dismembered by Netraxan demons’ gesture.”

Cordelia’s face was a cool mask. “So, you think you can just waltz off to Sunnydale without sparing us a thought and then come back here and buy back our affections with food?”

Angel winced. “I was hoping so, actually, yes.”

Cordelia and Wesley exchanged a look and then shrugged. “Throw in some toast and you’re free and clear with me,” Wesley assured him.

“Me too. I know I just ate five and a half doughnuts, but I’m still starving.”

As they scrambled out of bed to troop barefoot to the dining table and expectantly await their breakfast, Dennis obligingly turning up the lights for them, Angel feared the warm fuzzy feeling he felt for these two was in danger of turning into either sentimental speeches or girlish tears. “You know I…” he began.

Cordelia gave him a beaming smile over her shoulder. “We know.”

“Wes…?” Angel held his gaze. “Are we…?”

“You did the right thing, Angel.” Wesley handed Cordelia a napkin and shook out one for himself. “And any time you want to make a start on those eggs is fine with me.”

Angel went into the kitchen, Dennis helpfully turning on the gas for him while Angel searched around in Cordelia’s fridge and found that she had both eggs and bacon, as well as bread. Presumably they had been too exhausted to cook for themselves when they had staggered home to bed. The way they hadn’t even properly undressed and had been curled up together like the Babes in the Wood, suggested that whatever they were telling him now, the night had been long, tiring, and scary. As he reached for the bacon, he saw a pot of something that looked like….

He sniffed it curiously, and sure enough it was pig’s blood. Cordelia must have bought it for him when picking up the rest of the groceries. He glanced out at them and they were both squabbling amicably as if they hadn’t a care in the world, it evidently feeling like daylight was breaking over the city to them, even though it was still as dark as pitch outside, just because he had come back and everything was better now. He remembered Xander saying: “Don’t you get it, Mr Super Strength? _You’re_ their safe place…” and realized that it was true. 

“I’m not going to let anything happen to you two,” he said too quietly for them to hear, but he detected approval in the way Dennis handed him a saucepan.

“After breakfast, I’m putting Neosporin and arnica on those cuts and bruises,” Cordelia was telling Wesley. 

Wesley rolled his eyes. “Fine. But I reserve the right to complain bitterly throughout the whole operation.”

“Did I mention that I really didn’t like that Finn guy?” Angel called through to them.

“We thought he was a very nice chap.” Wesley glanced across at Cordelia. “Didn’t we?”

“Seemed like a great guy to me – and not even that Village People, despite the uniform,” Cordelia confirmed.

By the time Angel brought them the plates of eggs, he was worrying almost as much about Riley and Xander wanting to ‘rescue’ them as the Netraxans killing them. “What if they come back?”

Wesley had to swallow the mouthful of eggs he was ravenously devouring before he could manage that: “The Nextraxans?”

“Finn and Xander.” Angel scraped some more bacon onto Cordelia’s plate. “I don’t think they’ve given up on their intervention idea. If they come back – what are you going to do?”

Cordelia shrugged. “It really depends on whether or not they bring doughnuts.”

Wesley nodded. “Absolutely.”

Angel reached out and took their hands in his, them both looking at him in surprise, while he felt the warmth of their blood flow against his fingers. He could see the ridged cuts around Wesley’s wrist, and those patterns of bruises, blue and yellow and purple and gold. “I’m serious.”

It was Wesley who said gently: “We’re still here, aren’t we?”

Angel slipped his fingers through theirs, feeling an odd feeling of peace steal through him, because even though he had lost Buffy to another man, he still had these two, and they still trusted him. “So am I.” He squeezed their hands. “And I’m not going anywhere. This is home now. You two are home.”

That smile of relief that momentarily lit up their faces was quickly banished as they lowered their eyes so he wouldn’t see how happy they were, how much they needed him, and how unsure they still were of how much he needed them. 

“Was there any toast?” Wesley asked in a voice that sounded a little choked up.

“I wouldn’t hate a coffee,” Cordelia added with a catch in her voice.

He slipped his fingers loose from theirs a little reluctantly and headed into the kitchen, to find that Dennis had put the toast into the toaster and had the Mr Coffee bubbling, leaving him only the simple task of making Wesley a cup of tea. When he looked back, Wesley and Cordelia were smiling at each other as they ate, and Angel could already imagine the pattern of Wesley’s bruises as they faded, those cuts healed, until at last there would barely be anything to show what Faith had done to him. He thought of Buffy, and it felt like a thread fraying, never snapping entirely, but that thick strand of connection wearing thinner and thinner over the years as their lives went in separate directions. For the first time, he realized that not even to have back the life with her that they had briefly imagined, could he give up the life he had here: this sense of purpose, and these two people who needed him and whom he realized, with a sense of shock, he truly loved.

When he carried in the toast, coffee and tea, they were eating at a less ravenous rate and Wesley politely allowed Cordelia to take the first slice. Angel sat down at the table with them and stole a crispy piece of bacon from Wesley’s plate, chewing on it curiously. “You know, human flesh smells a lot like this when you cook it, but it doesn’t taste the same.”

Neither of them so much as blinked. Cordelia gulped down her coffee while Wesley sipped at his tea. “There’s blood in the fridge if you want some,” Cordelia invited, as if surprised that he wouldn’t know. 

“I saw. You don’t mind…?” That was too complicated a question to articulate, not just ‘You don’t mind buying pig’s blood for me? Having it rub shoulders with your groceries in the refrigerator where you keep your food?’ but also somehow: ‘You don’t mind me being a vampire?’ He remembered Buffy kissing him when he was still in game face and not even noticing, how he had thought at the time that he would never meet anyone else who could accept him so completely for what he truly was. Then he looked at these two, eating the food he had cooked for them, Wesley who had read everything about him when training as a Watcher, and Cordelia, who had been there in Sunnydale when he lost his soul, and yet here they were. He hoped he never started taking that for granted.

“Of course not.” Cordelia held out her plate. “You want my crispy fried bacon? You know, if you’re getting a yen for the bad old days?”

“Oh, help yourself to mine, too.” Wesley held out his own plate.

Angel took a piece from each plate and chewed on them. It hurt so much less to think of Buffy with another man here than it had in Sunnydale. He could even remember that this was what he had hoped for her – now that the first shocked feeling of betrayal had lessened – his wish that she would go on and have a life with someone with a pulse; someone, who, apparently, believed in protecting the innocent and saving the vulnerable as much as he did. He still didn’t like this Riley guy, but, despite the loss of Buffy and the concrete proof that she was now with someone else, as Dennis carried over his cup of warm blood, and Wesley and Cordelia ate their way, with only minimal squabbling, through the rest of their scrambled eggs, he found himself feeling curiously at peace.

##### The End

**Author's Note:**

> DISCLAIMER: ANGEL and its characters is the property of Joss Whedon (Mutant Enemy), David Greenwalt (LazyDave), Fox, and the WB network. No copyright infringement is intended. This story is for entertainment purposes only and no money exchanged hands. The original characters, situations, and story are the property of the author. This story may not be posted elsewhere without the consent of the author.


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